


Irreplacable Sparks

by stubbornessissues



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Gen, Missing Moments, Missing Scene, Near Death, Platonic Female/Male Relationships, Platonic Romance, Romantic Friendship, Season/Series 01
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-01-05
Packaged: 2018-05-12 01:05:27
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,638
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5648197
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/stubbornessissues/pseuds/stubbornessissues
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It’s so easy to keep promising things to someone when you think you have the rest of your lives to spare on them. It’s even easier when the rest of your life isn’t guaranteed to last past tomorrow.</p><p>She makes him want to last an eternity. </p><p>She can’t ever explain to him that an eternity might not be enough.</p><p>- A (huge) collection of missing Fitz/Skye moments from season 1 [because I'm a sucker for these two]</p>
            </blockquote>





	Irreplacable Sparks

**Author's Note:**

> This was a very long time in progress, and there are plans for a season two and, when it finishes, three also. I was just rather upset with how easily this relationship has been glossed over and gone under appreciated. 
> 
> All the love to those who endured me throwing extracts of this at them over the course of four months, and all the love to you for even glancing at this.

_“Do not let your fire go out,_  
_spark by irreplaceable spark_  
_in the hopeless swamps of the not-quite,_  
_the not-yet, and the not-at-all._  
_Do not let the hero in your soul_  
_perish in lonely frustration for the life you deserved_  
_and have never been able to reach._  
_The world you desire can be won._  
_It exists... it is real... it is possible... it's yours.”_

* * *

 

He apologises on the first day as a team. Apologises for nothing in particular- just his existence, he manages to boil it down to that- and Skye laughs, such a genuine, lip tugging sound that drags a breathless chuckle from Fitz too, his nose scrunching and teeth jutting past his lip.

He had been referring to the 'equipment' incident on the phone; the apology was for the whole awkward conversation and the way it had ended.

"Can we try the introduction thing again?" Fitz's fingers twist in his cardigan as the nerves cling to him and Skye really can't help but to smile. He's too genuine and open and it's the most disconcerting, refreshing change in the type of people she's let into her life that she falls into it so easily, so readily.

"You must be Fitz?" There's a teasing nature to her tone

"And you must be Skye. Thank you again for those audio files... Big help. They were a big help..."

Her hand lifts to give just a small shove to the shoulder, playful, joking, easy. "See, that wasn't so hard."

* * *

They fill their hours with Skye at her laptop and Fitz tinkering about with weapons for the team. It’s a nice, companionable silence that sits between them, and Simmons fills it, with incessant chatter and questions about Skye’s history and eventually he has to slow her down, for all of their sakes.

“Jemma, Jemma, stop.” He meets her eyes. “There’s a reason why Skye’s pulled herself from every database there is.”

“Oh. I’m sorry… I wasn’t thinking. It’s just that you’re so interesting and different to all the people at the academy and...” Eyes flicker between Skye and Fitz, as though she’s hoping his mind has magically changed about the questioning. “Right.”

Her posture drops a little. “I’ll just get back to the DNA diagnostics for you then.” And she skitters over to the computer, readily tapping at keys and letting her eyes dart back over to them.

“Thanks,” Skye’s eyes hardly move away from whatever she’s doing. “but I really don’t mind so much with you two.”

His look is curious when he blinks at her. “…Oh?”

“Yeah, you two are just cool science people. Can’t help your curiosity, can you?”

There’s a bit of a snort at that. “Did you just call us cool?” 

* * *

She’s just terrified and excited and curious and a whole range of heightened feelings that leave her sleepless. Skye insists that it’s just the feelings keeping her awake. She repeats the reason over and over in her head in case anyone comes in asking why she’s got pop music filling the space of her bunk when it’s so late.

She feels like a kid hiding away from the nuns at the orphanage again; it’s just a little bit different this time. It _feels_ different. Not a girl in an orphanage but a girl with a family that she doesn’t want to disturb. Already FitzSimmons and Coulson feel like they’re going to be a good fit. May and Ward might need some work, but already it feels right to her.

They’re going to be like a family; a super smart, ass kicking family with enough emotional problems to fill an ocean.

Skye rolls to her back, there’s air con right above her head and she squints at it for a second before she laughs a small, breathless laugh. “Of course.” She mutters amidst the sounds.

“What is it?”

“Jesus!” Skye flips herself over so fast she almost falls from the bed. “What the hell Fitz?” But the moment of anger barely has time to flash before she laughs at him too. “I didn’t know- oh my god, I didn’t know there was a gap up there.” She pulls herself to her feet, bare toes curling against the duvet – it’s ridiculously soft - so that she can meet Fitz at the small gap between their bunks.

“Yeah, it’s kind of weird. I suppose it’s just some safety protocol, in case, I don’t know, someone’s trapped or something.” She can hear the shrug in his voice, even if she doesn’t get to see it.

“Freaky’s more like it. Girl can’t get some private time if she knows there’s a weird British guy listening to her.” She’s smirking at him as he pulls away and makes a face.

“Hey, it goes both ways, now I can’t listen to embarrassing music and sing along badly.” Fitz is so easy and normal that it’s refreshing.

“Have you not heard my own music?” Skye gestures vaguely behind her “Feel free to turn it up and I’ll join you.” She feels so at home when he laughs with her that it later baffles her that it was only day two of many more to spend together.

(Even later she will consider the possibility of soul mates, and they will both stumble over the words; but at the time, it’s enough to her that when he laughs, she mimics him without a single thought.)

She presses her body to the wall and likes to think he is doing the same on the other side when they end up with their faces nearly touching. Her forearms, once more like Fitz’s are just barely resting atop the wall, on them, she lets her head drop and a stillness finally rises. The steadiness of a summer day in distant memories.

“You and your friend… Well, are you friends or _friends_?” Eyebrows rise and fall to emphasise Skye’s point before she curls her lips into, what many consider, an unnervingly suggestive smirk, as though she knows she’s right, but wants to hear it anyway.

His head shakes, eager to prove to Skye that he’s got options. “No- nah, we’re- well were more than friends but it’s not like we’re together or anything. We’ve just known each other too long, y’know?”

She wishes she knows; she wishes she understands what it’s like to have someone so certain in your life. She shrugs as noncommittedly as she can manage “Not really. I’m not exactly a permanent person.” A beat passes by in which her statement echoes.

_(This isn’t going to matter to her.)_

“How long have you two known each other?” 

* * *

Their first mission together as a team, where Skye isn’t just a kidnapped hacker looking to claw Shield down from the inside arrives. She’s nervous, and when Skye gets nervous she prattles and bares her guts for everyone to see.

“So, do we know what this thing is? What it does?” Squashed between Fitz and Simmons she catches all the eyes she can, hair flicking as she turns. “We’ve got to have some idea, right?” Part of her does this because of the nerves.  
  
Another part of her is unendingly curious.  
  
Really, she cannot stand the silence of the drive, the way the kit box for the D.W.A.R.V.E.S presses against her leg, draws ridges that she will later consider the most insignificant in the world.  
  
Nobody answers her questions and that only serves to make the silence that edge heavier.  
  
“Good talk.” A sarcastic mutter beneath her breath fills the air while brown eyes are wide as she ducks her head to peer beyond the glass of the window. Skye cannot get over how _cool_ it is that it’s bulletproof. She takes to admiring everything about this life that she’s somehow grabbed. How not one of them blinks at the fact that they need a bulletproof car to begin with, or that there’s about five firearms filling the crevices (and Skye’s willing to bet there’s another ten she can’t see to count) for opportune reach.  
  
It baffles her that they’re so ready for violence; eyes dart to the two bodies she’s sandwiched between, and she pities that they’re going to lose some part of themselves the second all of these cool things become necessary. It just arrives sooner than she would have liked.   

* * *

“I’m sorry.” Fitz is the first to speak after a ten-minute foray into silence, courtesy of Ward’s anger. His tone is but a squeak against the engines they feel rumbling about them, halfway into it becoming a part of nature in the same way breathing goes unnoticed. “You had to stop fighting because of me and I’m sorry… I should have learned kung fu or something.”

She thinks he's being stupidly hard on himself but the sound of fighting is still kind of ringing in her ears, or echoing in her head - she's not really sure which - because Skye's never been caught up in such an intense fight before; she's normally the one breaking it up.

"If this is going to become a regular thing, I vote for all of us learning some kung-fu, not just you Fitz." She has to admit, the idea of either of the two scientists kicking ass is more than a little amusing and Skye has to suck on her lips to keep the laughter from bubbling out of her. She doesn’t blame him for the fact that they all sit with wrists bound to the floor of the cargo hold, pressed shoulder to shoulder. She’s actually glad for the warmth the two scientists provide either side of her.

"Don't look at me." Ward shrugs himself away (as best any man tied down can) when eyes wander over to him, tentatively hopeful and pretty damn scared.

"May still hasn't woken up yet." Simmons observes, face utterly concerned. "I just wish I knew what kind of gas they had used... If she's come over from administration, it's likely she's not used to-"

"She's not from administration."

“There’s no way-” The two almost drown each other out, and it’s enough to make the woman stir.

* * *

Skye makes for an interesting drunk, he discovers later in the evening. The plane is quiet and they’re finally back in the clouds (though he wouldn’t mind more time on the ground) and the night around them is blanket soft; they’ve lost count of the beers they’ve drank together that day.

The empty cooler might explain why Fitz cannot let his feet find the floor.

* * *

Skye practically squeals whenever she laughs. Fitz can’t help but think it’s adorable every time she does-

It becomes something of a goal for him to get one out of her whenever he can, just to hear that sound.

* * *

He’s too awkward for his own good. Too blind. It’s beyond frustrating.

Sometimes it’s enough for her to want to lock the pair of them in a closet. Nothing in there but them because she knows that he’ll be able to find something that will get them out.

* * *

It’s just nice for the both of them to have someone who understands computers, even if their knowledge is a different kind, she can ramble on about firewalls and connections and links and he’ll get it.

Fitz can talk specs and make mentions of processing speeds and bemoan having to fiddle with the heat sink and she’ll get it.

So they fall upon each other and spend hours piecing together bits of hardware to create the ideal computer for such weirdly specific tasks that it actually worries their team somewhat, but to them, it’s funny and distracting to argue about what kind of graphics card one might want for the watching of cute cat (or monkey) videos.

* * *

“Desert rose?” She can’t stop herself from grinning when he passes the compact over and he just laughs, hand running through hair as eyes turn to Simmons. He almost appears as nervous as she feels; snakes coiling up in your gut kind of nervous and it strikes her that maybe it’s the way their skin touched when he gave her the makeup.

“I had to help my mum out sometimes…” Fitz shrugs as an explanation. “I picked up the odd thing.”

“Hey, no, colours are important.” Fingers flick the pad up in a practiced, fluid motion and Skye peers at herself in the little mirror, head tilted and locks dangling. She picks over her frayed hair, wisps sticking out and a small bead of sweat on her forehead. “Gotta look my best to impress this multi-billionaire, potential kidnapper, right?”

Would it be wrong for her to ask him about those nerves? She dabs the colour to her skin, a single ball of it on the back of her hand that she’s thrilled to find works perfectly. She’s had such trouble finding anything herself and here’s a Scottish man handing it to her like he’s sharing popcorn on movie night.

Her solution is not Fitz, but the one who probably knows more about him than he does.

Equally practiced, she snaps the compact shut, fits it into her palm as though it belongs there (instead of a laptop) and she snatches out at Simmons wrist. “Come on.” She says with a smile and a jerk of her head. “You’ve got to help me pick something out.”

They’re gone, so quick, laughing and chattering, and Skye feels finally right, like she’s got a place in this world, and all it ever took was some normalcy (or is it the other way around?), a friend and a place she thinks she’ll like to call home. But better than that, it’s always moving, adapting, changing, and that kind of motion makes for more of a home than a house ever could.

* * *

Of all the things, Skye never thought it would be gambling that she’d lose at when it came to her new nerd friends. She never thought they’d have a high alcohol tolerance. These kid like scientists barely out of school, currently kicking her ass at strip poker and laughing about it.  
  
“Next time, I’m picking the game.” She scowls, fingering her belt free and once again reaching for the cards to shuffle.  
  
“Oh please, we’ll beat you in anything you pick.” Simmons laughs at her again  
  
“Yeah, one of us will.” Taking the break as his cue, Fitz picks at the pile of cookies  
  
“Is that a challenge you two?” She wags the split deck of cards in their direction.  
  
“One we’re probably going to regret.”

* * *

Ward still can’t tell the two of them apart yet and Skye takes offense at that enough for all three of them. They think it’s kind of funny.

* * *

“-ctly have a good track record with going out in the field so far.” Fitz, voice up a pitch when Skye enters the lab, is shifting surveillance tools into a silver case. He’s just that little bit too focused on the task to actually be focused on it.

Skye bites into her lip as she shimmies herself to sit on a counter to watch. Fitz is clearly nervous over the idea of leaving the safety of their plane again and it leaves such a spark of sympathy in her heart when she watches the two work. They might be older than her (which is weird enough in its own right) but they know even less about the world than she does, and they don’t deserve to be thrust into all of these bad things so quickly.

“Which is why you’ve got to keep going out there, to break that streak.” All she can do for now is offer words; try to bolster their moods. There’s a smile in her teeth and sincerity in her eyes, but her legs dangle like a child’s and for a single moment they’re three scared kids who don’t know what they’re doing.

“That’s exactly what I’ve been telling him!” The triumph Simmons exudes then makes her want to laugh, but she feels, right now, that this moment, while they can have it, ought to have some gravity.

“But for every mission we have where nothing goes wrong how many are we going to have where things do?” Fitz drops his façade the moment he realises the conversation is going to turn from potential bickering to a genuine discussion.

She sees it all; the sheer exhaustion that comes with endless worry, the reluctance and the love and the way he carries his heart on his sleeve in all the same ways she does and more. He only cares about people, not what they’ve done or will do. Skye considers herself lucky to know him; he deserves whatever peace she can offer.

“There’s no way of knowing.” Elbows press into thighs and her back bends as she leans forward to meet his eyes (and god are they the most perfect blue.) “But you sitting here while everyone else leaves, because they will, it’s what you all signed up for, it’s not going to do anyone any good. At least out there, you can do something, even if you think you can’t.”

Appeal to what he stands for and Fitz will always give in.

“I still did okay helping you from here when you went into Quinn’s party…” That was indeed true, but she still had needed others there.

“Not everything can be fixed with your toys Fitz.” Pointedly, brown eyes fall upon the open case, practically flooded with wires, and he and Simmons both follow her, looking somewhat sheepish about it.

“It’s going to take some getting used to.” Simmons admits, voice seemingly small and admonished. “We never got to do much outside of the Academy. Not that we got to spend enough time there either.”

Skye has learned enough, from Coulson and Ward to understand that the two friends standing before her, almost ashamed of the life they’ve lived, are more than utterly brilliant. She understands that much. “Hey, I get it, you’re not used to this stuff, I’m not either. At least we can learn how to deal with it together.”

There is a solidarity between them that she adores, even if Skye does feel, sometimes as though she’s cutting her way in between something truly magical and once in a life time like. They seem to have accepted her. She needs to do the same and understand that she’s one of them now, shared times at SHIELD or not.

It’s time for them to make new history together.                     

* * *

_Too easy_ , she thinks. At the press of a few buttons she’s uncovered the encrypted stream, and that might have something to do with the size of the town (it definitely does) but she’s sure it’s got to be something else too as she pings it to the screen in front of Fitz and Simmons.

“That looks a lot like our van.”

That is indeed the three of them that they see on the screen, confirmed by Fitz with very ungraceful arm waving that almost hits her in the face. For a single, hanging second it’s weird and almost funny.

Her heart skips a beat.

She bursts for the driver seat with a yelp and goddammit Ward’s so tall, she can barely reach the pedals. It’s horrifying, and in the moment she has enough clarity to know she’s going to chew Ward out later for leaving them alone and for being so damn tall.

They’re rolling and a window shatters and she hears such a terrible crack that sickens her because that might have been one of the squishy scientists in the back.

“You two okay?” She can’t work out which way is up, can’t understand the proportions of her body well enough to twist around and check on them.

Rising groans lift her heart and she has enough sense in her to understand the lead in her chest is guilt, because she has broken her first promise to the two that she wants to matter to. Dimly Skye is able to register a shock of pain in her everything; she notes that nothing is burning in agony as she half expected. A single, deep breath fills her lungs, eyes shut in a brief moment as her brain unscrambles, and then the breath is released.

She collects herself, claws every which way she can and stumbles upon fresh air and fallen leaves. 

* * *

They sit with legs curling over the back of the sofa and backs arched so that their heads hang. Simmons in the background continues to mutter about the neurological repercussions of keeping this up, but they're both determined to win. Fitz might be seeing spots and the roar of his blood has been drowning out every word either of the girls have said in the past five minutes, but they're laughing, together, and eventually he has to drop down, collapse in a heap.

Skye's more graceful and lands facing him with a smug smile on her face. Fitz just buries his in the carpet with a groan.

"Yes!” She’s ever so triumphant, “I knew I could break you. Have fun cleaning!" and she sticks her tongue out at him, eyes scrunching at the corners and nose wrinkling.

“All right, just give me five minutes to get the blood out of my head.” The words are muffled and irritated. “How’re you so good at that?”

* * *

They’re finally beginning to feel like a team, like a little family living some fantasy life above the clouds. It only takes three words to pull it all down. _The Rising Tide_. Anger rises in little bubbles- she cannot afford to lose this opportunity- she’d listed Shield as ‘ _Do Not Touch_ ’ weeks ago and someone’s just ignored her. Of course she’s angry.

Skye tracks down the hackers’ location with a ferocity that amazes Fitz and Simmons. When it zeroes in on Austin, Texas she feels her heart crumple and a sickness rises in her throat.

“Miles Lydon, not Skye, to everyone’s relief.” She catches Fitz’s tone over her shoulder and she’s only just capable of holding back an involuntary shudder. He trusts her so much. They all trust her, and she knows, at some point, her reasons are going to come to the surface.

There’s not a universe where this isn’t going to destroy her from the inside out. 

* * *

He forgives her for the thing with Miles so fast that she might cry.

She does cry.

She cries and she crumples into him and he's ready for her, with his soft, woolly sweater that smells of metal and strawberries and she almost wants to laugh because Fitz uses strawberry shampoo.

 _Of course_ Fitz uses strawberry shampoo.

"We'll always be your friends." He insists and she cries harder.

No one has ever been so genuinely loving towards her. 

* * *

She surprises him with a balloon and a toy monkey and a nervous little smile.

"I might have snuck a peek at the team's birthdays" Skye admits, offering them to him "I know there's still technically about twenty minutes until you turn twenty-seven but..." She shrugs honestly.

Fitz practically crushes the girl in a hug and she laughs into his chest "You're welcome Fitz."

* * *

He thinks he might love her. It’s sudden and out of place but when she dives after him for the cookie in his hand he knows that he never wants her to leave him.

* * *

She thinks she might love him. It comes to heel slowly and she can't stop watching his hands work. She wonders what they might feel like in her hair.

She already knows they give good hugs.

* * *

Somehow, even when they’re the ones staying behind, their potential to survive doesn’t increase. It’s scary and terrifying and incomprehensively frustrating and all the emotions in between. He regrets his inability to dig his heels in when Coulson takes steps towards him with folded hands and a face familiar with the art of tactful apologies.

His eyes flicker to Skye on the sofa opposite him, he feels Ward’s presence in the nearby kitchen and knows May to be flying the plane because they’re on their way to a SHIELD facility to dump an infected helmet that killed three grown men. So Jemma is the only one unaccounted for and it makes his muscles seize.

“What’s happened?” he asks because he doesn’t want to stumble over her body on his way to find out. Fitz can feel his fingers grow slack and his throat swells before the words ever make it to air. Skye, he understands to be equally mortified.

“I think Simmons is going to need your help.” Is all he gets and it’s enough. Fitz is on his feet in less than a second, tablet deserted and he’s sure he hears Skye and Ward behind him asking Coulson to clarify.

* * *

Skye drops down a few steps from the bottom, just behind him, and she wants to say something, he can feel it in the air.

What is there to say?

“She’ll find a cure.” It’s that simple to Skye. She has faith in Simmons and somehow that’s enough. Fitz on the other hand, he’s seen this desperation one time too many, he understands that even they as scientists have limitations. “She has to find a cure.”

Suddenly he’s looking at her, seeing her. Blue eyes shine in the dimness of the cargo hold and he’s finally seeing Skye from all these different angles that he never knew could exist. In her voice he could catch all of the reasons why Skye loved them both, all the reasons she needed them, and underneath it all is the reasons why they love her and they blend together.

* * *

Skye’s terrified to leave the two of them alone when Simmons is finally back on the plane. She makes a habit of clinging to her, long, drawn out hugs that echo with the sentiment that she doesn’t ever want Simmons to do something so damn reckless as jumping out of a plane again.

It’s a wonder the girl can breathe from the way she and Fitz hover over her.

“At least I got to find out just how firm Ward is.” She teases, with her eyes scrunched up like they do and Skye can’t help but laugh with something of a gasp.

“Jemma Simmons!” It’s a falsely incredulous tone, easy and definitely joking. There may be a slap from the flopping sleeve of her sweater that Skye’s been tugging on.

It keeps her fingers busy okay.

“Oh come on, you’ve definitely wondered too.” Her eyebrow goes up and Skye does nod along. “It was totally scientific.”

“You clinging to Mr. Muscle in the ocean when you’re actually a totally great swimmer?”

She coughs behind pursed lips, eyelids flutter and she’s all prim and proper again. “I have no idea what you’re talking about Skye.”

* * *

"So, is it just a work thing?" A finger flickers between the two scientists "Your names, I mean, I doubt your parents actually call you Simmons since- y'know, they share the same surname."

"Oh, well I guess you could say that. " Simmons breezes past Skye with her eyes fixed on data readings

"You two are so close but you still use surnames though... I've heard him call you Jemma like twice since I've been here."

"To be fair, Jemma is way less embarrassing than mine." Fitz adds his input. "You know; it actually suits her."

Both girls have to laugh. “What? But Leopold’s adorable.” Skye practically drawls his name He has to mutter a hurried excuse before scuttling out of the lab before they can get too far.

* * *

So, it's occurred to me..." She starts out strong and sudden, breaking the silence that's fallen upon them unnoticed.

"Hmm." Fitz hardly lets his eyes stray from the screw he's twisting into place.

"You make such awesome things, the Night Night gun for one." Skye's peering over the top of her screen, watching his fingers move with such a practised ease. "and you said before, we kinda speak the same language and it got me thinking..."

Blue eyes dart up for a second, brows furrowed and curious. "What are you after, Skye?"

"Wh- nothing- I was just- Yeah, okay. I was thinking, you probably know how to make the most awesome laptop that could ever be made and it's not like shield is going to miss the resources or anything."

They both let their eyes trail to the cheap thing Skye grips between her fingers and he almost wants to laugh. "You want me to make you a laptop?"

"A super cool one that could make my hacking and stuff go a lot faster. You could probably do a lot better than whatever you can just buy on the shelf."

He scrutinises her for a second, wires pinched between his fingers and blue eyes seeming to pin her where she sits. “Don’t you know how?” It takes her a second to realise that Fitz is over estimating her, while she shakes her head. No one has ever thought too much of her and she’s not sure how to take it.

“No. I just break into secure things with them. I couldn’t tell you how to put one together if you held me at gunpoint.” By now, Skye wouldn’t dismiss it as a potential scenario.

“I could teach you.” Fitz offers, his attention falling back to the copper making dips in his skin. “We could make it into a little project of ours. Building you the most awesome laptop there ever was and in return, you could teach me a few tricks?” It’s the most forward he’s ever been with her, and still there’s a question that makes his tone dip into the pool of uncertainty.

It certainly wouldn’t hurt for the two of them to swap ideas and have even more reason to spend late hours in the lab alone together. Perhaps that prospect is where her excitement stems from. Or maybe it’s the fact that she’s going to have a brand new, one of a kind thing made just for her for once in her life.

Most friends get cheesy necklaces of cheap plastic or woven bracelets. She and Fitz get each other computers and circuitry, and if that’s not a testament to their potential together, she doesn’t know what is. 

* * *

They've got a few hours, the Bus is refuelling and Coulson's off with May and Ward restocking their food. Of course the other three can't be trusted with the food.

It wouldn't be healthy enough.

And they know they're right, but it doesn't stop a sauntering Skye from grumbling about it a little before spinning on her heels, a precariously balanced move.

"At least we get a bit of a break, I don't think I've done actual shopping, in an actual store in months." And there's definitely a skip in her step as she wobbles towards a window. She's a little drunk on her freedom and neither of them are capable of blaming her.

"It's just a bit of a shame we couldn't drag Ward along; he would hate this."

"What, like he enjoys food shopping with May and Coulson so much?"

"True enough. Just wish I could be there to gloat about it- They better get my pop tarts." It's so easy. This. Sauntering through the mall with two friends, easily loveable people, to accompany.

Skye couldn't be happier.

Fitz couldn't be happier.

Simmons couldn't be happier.

"Oh hey!" Simmons exclaims and she jerks Skye away from the leather jacket she's considering, Fitz trails from her other hand.

They can both see where she's headed. "Jemma..." He warns, but it's nothing meaningful, he doesn't actually care so much.

"Oh yes! We need official pictures!" Skye's equally enthusiastic and her hand's in her pocket before Simmons can even rip the curtain of the booth open. And they've actually interrupted a couple who they have to apologise too. (They were just a little eager) It's one of those cutesy, touristy photo booths with custom frames and clipart hats and flowers that can be edited on and Skye's 100% up for it.

Fitz is practically dragged in by the two girls and they laugh and argue about who gets the little stool.

In the End it's Fitz, he's the tallest.

"You better smile." She teases and nudges with an elbow and he does. They all do. They've never been so happy because they're all drunk on each other's love and it shows in the photos when they're all done and come out as goofy as they could have hoped.

It reminds Skye, remarkably, of one of those dumb chick flicks she would lounge around and watch with Miles, of the couple doing the dumb things in the photo-booth, usually in amidst the montages.

And she does love them.

Skye loves Fitz and Simmons equally and intensely.

She adores them and she holds onto those photos as tight and close as she dares. After all, she doesn't want to crumple them, but she'd be damned if she was ever going to do anything but cherish them as much as she cherished the people.

* * *

It practically does drive her insane, knowing that, while she and Simmons are safely at the Hub, while May is standing alongside Hand being so ridiculously zen about the fact that _they sent their boys straight into danger alone_ , well, Fitz and Ward could be in literally any situation right at this moment.

She cannot stand this simple not knowing. She can’t and Skye makes it very clear.

In her own little ways she rages against the entire system that is SHIELD, she reminds them with such a burning heat that she was a member of the Rising Tide when they picked her up, and that’s always going to follow her around- they all know it and remember it, so why not make use of it?- no matter how much good work she does.

First and foremost, Skye is for the people. She is for them having a right to know and she will not ever give up on that.

She’s just going to need a little help to get their boys back.

“What if something went wrong out there?” She presses Simmons, breaths fractionally shorter in her panic. “What if they’re injured or being tortured somewhere right now?”

Those words drive themselves right into her heart; immediately Skye regrets them- Simmons’ face falls into a hundred variations of panic and horror and she thinks she feels the same things coat every inch of her skin.

“Fitz,” Simmons’ voice is what drives it home, what breaks her; for now, on this single thing, they are going to be one. Ward, they know he can handle himself, but Fitz “…tortured?”

_Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it. Don’t think about it._

**Don’t think about how stupidly loyal he is. Don’t think about how stupidly loyal he is. Don’t think about how stupidly loyal he is. Don’t think. Don’t think.**

“What exactly did you have in mind?” Skye doesn’t want to think about how this must kill Simmons if her heart tumbles like this after a few months.

What horrors do ten years get her?

* * *

She looks for him when they’re a few miles away from Ossetia. She wants to just- she’s not really sure, she just can’t bear the feeling of not being with him at the moment.

He’s not in the lab. He’s not in the lounge or the kitchen.

Fitz isn’t even in his bunk.

She has to duck into Coulson’s office, check in with May, as unlikely as it is.

It’s Ward that sends her into the right part of the plane, after she almost makes him drop a questionable amount of food.

(“What? It was a long mission.”)

He’s down in avionics, legs stretched across the width of the corridor and she’s about to turn away and let him be. She gets it. The hum in the area, the low lights and the way the walls reach out for you must be comforting to him.

But Fitz smiles up at her.

“Hey.”

“Hey.”

“Wanna join me?”

“Okay.”

* * *

Neither of them are quite sure how they’ve managed it, but they have.

They have the whole team crowding around the tv in the lounge and they’re all gripping plastic steering wheels and yelling.   A lot.

There’s a lot of yelling.

Mario Kart does that.

Ward has sworn he’s going to kick everyone’s ass, so has Skye, and Coulson and May.

Fitz and Simmons seem to have partnered up and they’re muttering an aside to each other about optimal placements of banana skins (“Which is ridiculous because I’ve tested this and it doesn’t actually work, I have no idea where the presumption comes from.”) and bickering about when best to use specific coloured shells.

None of them dare tell them that if any of this was working, they’d have to fight each other for first place.

They’re scientists, they’ll work it out.

Or if that way that Jemma’s eyes twitch over to her is anything to go on, Jemma knows, and she’s ready to be brutal in her betrayal.

It surprises no one when May wins.

* * *

She admits a lot of things to him and in turn, he admits things back to her.

She takes care to not tell him how they crush her because Jemma already knew all of this.

He’s her first but she’s his second and it crushes her.

* * *

They’ve made a lot of promises to each other, some lie forgotten at the bottom of bottles of beer, some hover in the privacy of their bunks.

Some are never forgotten, but never spoken of, and some are simple, vibrant, sometimes jokingly violent.

It’s so easy to keep promising things to someone when you think you have the rest of your lives to spare on them. It’s even easier when the rest of your life isn’t guaranteed to last past tomorrow.

She makes him want to last an eternity.

She can’t ever explain to him that an eternity might not be enough.

* * *

They’ve never once talked about what this is.

There’s not a word for it because they’re definitely more than friends, but they’re not dating and there’s no casual _‘with benefits’_ because there hasn’t been any sex or even kissing.

But Ward asks her one day. There’s a pretzel in her mouth and they’re playing Battleship again- he really does like his board games- it snaps in two and that is definitely an indicator to her SO that there’s something going on.

“Why do you want to know?” She shrugs, all casual air, eyes focused on the peg between her fingers. “E3?”

“Miss. No reason, it’s just- you two don’t really seem like the kind that would click.” A peg is driven into the board. “G12”

“Hit.” An eye roll. “Why’s that?” She knows what he means. She knows exactly what that means and it draws a purse into her lips and the embers of a fire into her heart. Ward is supposed to be his friend.

“You’re just different people, you come from pretty different places.” He doesn’t blanch under her gaze

“F5. You’ve got to be joking.”

“Hit.”

“This whole team is a mess of people from different places. You could literally say that about any of us.”

“Except FitzSimmons.” He mutters this, as though it excuses him and his presumptions.  

May and the mission they’re to embark on saves him from the lecture of a lifetime because really, Ward’s got to be pushing thirty and he should know better.

* * *

She makes a point of spending more time with him because sometimes she can be petty like that.

She bitches about Ward to either of the lab’s occupants and neither of them ever tell her off. It’s nice.

The more she bitches, the more he stretches her, and the more he stretches her, the more she’s going to bitch. She’s done enough pull ups that she thinks falling to her death might be better at this point. But she’s not going to apologise, no matter how many minutes he pushes her to punch the dumb bag in the bay.

It kind of feels good, to stand for this one thing as the rest of her life floods with grey uncertainties. It’s like a shining beacon of clarity because she knows that this is one thing that she’s right about.

* * *

These days she feels as though all she’s good for is scanning the web chatter and bothering one of the actual SHIELD agents while they work. Skye doesn’t dare bring this up either because, once more, she would be the nuisance.

She just can’t help herself when the opportunity is presented. “So, these guys were tapping into their rage, weren’t they?” She’s chewing on her lip as the plane hurtles towards Spain and she scans through a hoard of search results that could bear some idea on the location they’re looking for.

“That’s what the professor said, right? It shines a light in your darkest places and harnesses all of your pent up aggression and negative emotions and turns it into raw strength.” She’s terrified to imagine what that would bring out in herself- let alone her team. (Skye does not know when they became _her_ team)

She thinks of her nights when her chest felt too tight and she sobbed her fury into pillows, hoping she would suffocate and remembers bloody knuckles from the times she punched bricks and swung shattered bottles of glass and she knows terror. Skye had herself and others to keep her in check.

She doesn’t want to find out what that would turn out as, once unbridled.

“That’s gotta suck.” She points out once Fitz hums his confirmation.

Part of her wonders what he thinks of when she flashes back to her lonely nights; does he mirror her pain? There’s a new found silence between them that feels almost purposeful, and it has Skye glancing towards him; she doesn’t even have to ask to know that he must have felt similar pains.

“We don’t have to talk about it… but you know where to find me if you ever want to.” He’s nodding. “And I know the same goes for you.”

* * *

“He didn’t mean any of it.”

“I know.”

“Fitz, seriously, he didn’t mean it.”

“It sure felt like it.”

There’s a hand on his shoulder and one that gropes for his jaw (he hopes she was aiming for that and not his eye)

“That staff did something to him, he wasn’t right, you saw how he was.” She presses and rolls him towards her so that their curled up forms are facing each other and their eyes meet across the pillow.

Really the bunk is too small for the two of them, but it doesn’t stop them pressing against each other in the dark hours of flight when there’s a thousand words to be said and just as many silences to follow.

“Yeah, it tapped into subconscious areas of his brain and brought up all the things he thinks of but never talks about.”

“Doesn’t mean that it’s true.” Skye folds her arm back under her head “I mean, I know I talk a lot but at least I’m trying to help when I do…”  

He wonders if now is the right time to tell her he could never grow tired of her voice, not when it carries so many inflections that he hasn’t yet learned.”

“You do help.” He settles for a small, honest smile.

* * *

“My mum’s going to love you.”

“If Coulson ever lets us go for more than a few hours.” She takes it in stride and it’s half a joke, half a bitter truth. They really don’t seem to have the time any more.

“Technically you can leave whenever you want. You’re still only on here as a consultant.”

“But they have my van.”

“Well then, perhaps we need to steal it back and use it go visit my mum.”

The way he so naturally says ‘ _we’_ makes Skye reel and she buries it under a joke.

“Fitz, how’s your geography these days? Because last time I checked, we can’t drive from America to Scotland.”

“Oh yeah.”

She’s definitely in love with him.

* * *

She’s vibrant in her laughter and if it were any other situation, he would be weak for the challenging smugness in the way her lips curl.

Simmons and Ward don’t so much as unfold their arms, only watch.

Skye’s on one side of the holo-table and he’s on the other; the whole plane echoes with music and Skye’s still laughing as he darts side to side and she mirrors the motion back at him.

“Had no idea you were so good.”

He practically whines in frustration. “We all know that’s not me Skye, come on.”

He just wants her to turn the music off and makes a reach for the tablet in her hand. She dodges with a squeal and makes for the stairs back up and Fitz scrambles after her.

“Let’s see if Coulson and May are loving your singing. It’s so romantic.”

“HE’S NOT EVEN SCOTTISH.”

There’s a terribly confusing moment when Skye skids to a stop and he’s just a fraction too late and crashes into her.

“Who’s not?” Coulson blocks their path.

“Fitz.” Skye’s innocent and bland when she answers and that makes it all the more hilarious to her.

Coulson tilts his head at them both. “Care to elaborate?”

“Okay, well….”

“Shut off the music.” Fitz thinks he would very much like to jump out of the cargo hold right about now. May’s strutting through the corridor, annoyance burning clear.

“But Fitz sings so wonderfully.” She pouts.

If he were smaller, he would be hiding behind Skye right about now, or slinking back down the stairs to the lab.

“Someone want to start making sense?” Skye’s laughter erupts and all she can bear to do is offer Coulson the tablet in her hand. “Fitz and the Tantrums?”

“Sir, I swear it has nothing to do with me.”

* * *

“What’re you afraid of?” It comes from nowhere, has no forewarning of its arrival

“What?” Skye does the only thing she can do, and questions.

“You’ve got to be scared of something, I just can’t work out what it might be.” He’s faceless as he shifts to watch her, the darkness robs him of any concrete emotions and she has to wonder how long he’s been rolling this question about in his head. “It’s just, even as we were stranded and being chased by a ghost looking to kill us, you were pretty put together…”

“Not like Ward.” She deflects.

“He’s a robot, he doesn’t count.” He fills her heart so terrifyingly easily and a smile he doesn’t see betrays her.

“Why do you want to know? Looking to pull a prank.” Skye rolls to her stomach, elbows propping her up so that she can meet him properly.

“Just want to make sure you’re not a robot like Mr. Save the day.” She knows that dip and rise in stability to be doubt, a chip of it in his foundations that make her wonder.

“Spiders are pretty freaky, with their gross hairy bodies.” There’s not enough air in the room or space in her mouth for the truth and he gets that, doesn’t question or push, just drops away from her.

* * *

Somehow, he’s the one with cuts and bruises, even though she’s the one training to be a field agent.

It baffles them all.

Skye jokes with Jemma that he’s like a magnet for all of these dumb accidents- something about his babyish face just invites flying fists- but they’re both just waiting for the punchline in the form of a day when he doesn’t ever wake up to complain about the pounding in his head.

They feel it teetering over them like a reckoning.

Ward’s in worse shape, he always is, but he has Simmons seeing to him and Skye gets stuck with the complainer.

She presses the wet cloth to his cheek and incites a jump. The lack in trust hurts, but she rolls her eyes and snags her fingers in his curls. “You, need to stay still Leopold Fitz.”

“It’s cold.” He mutters this so childishly that she hits him.

“Then let me get this over with you baby.” Is enough to silence him as she works cloth over blood but he proceeds to wince and cringe away from the touch. “If you don’t like it stop getting hit in the face.” Equally firm she throws the cloth down and drops her fingers away.

“Nobody’s taught me Kung-Fu yet,” He sounds exactly like a berated child looking to get in a last word. “Can’t blame me for that.”

There’s a laugh deep in her throat that almost rolls out bitter as fingers work open a small jar. “You could always join May for her five a.m yoga sessions.” Skye's terribly close to him as she presses the cool paste along his jaw and it's a monumental effort for her to not get so completely caught up on how warm his flesh is beneath her fingertips, a beautiful contrast.

For an inscrutable moment Fitz seems to consider that possibility before he responds as she knows he will. "I think training with May will kill me before anyone else gets a chance."

"You could always join me and Ward."

"I was joking about the kung-fu Skye."

"But I'm not."

* * *

She'd never exactly considered herself to be the kind of person to get caught up on little things like an accent, but she swears she'd adore Fitz's just narrating her whole life. She could listen to it endlessly.

She just thinks it would make a wonderful background noise, something comforting and familiar.

She makes him sit with her one day, and Simmons joins them, and they're all folded legs and at home with each other. Skye makes the pair of them repeat words after her, just to hear how different they are, and sometimes she mocks or laughs, sometimes the lot of them argue about how a word is pronounced or spelt.

It's so thrillingly simple, to the lot of them that, even surrounded by the most sci-fi, top of the line technology that humans possess, they ditch it all and settle for words and learning the smallest of things about each other and Skye adores the crap out of it. This is how simple and honest the world is supposed to be, and she understands, in the moment, that this is the sort of thing that SHIELD is working for, and to be part of it is all she wants out of life right now. 

* * *

"Why are you here Fitz?" She's been asking herself the same question a thousand times over and for some reason, her answer changes, it falters sometimes and he's the cause of it.

"What?" He's distracted by the fabric beneath his hands and the needle that he's pushing thread through. She didn't know he can sew.

"Why're you here, on this team? With SHIELD?" She ensures that she cannot be mistaken this time.

"I don't know, it just always seemed like the right thing to do, they had a place for me and I took it." It's so simple, he hasn't got anything complicated behind him and Skye revels in that notion. She envisions that kind of clarity for herself and it's so wonderful.

"What about this team?"

"Where's this coming from Skye?" She's entrapped his attention and stolen it away from his task, the needle sits on the suit they're making for Mike, still not threaded somehow.

"Just... please just tell me." She can't work out why she's pressing like this, wants herself to stop so much, because this is not something she needs to do, she's simply fishing for a way to get this tension out of her veins.

"Well... That's Simmons fault, I couldn't just let her go off on her own..." She almost regrets asking as his lips curl towards a contained bitterness and there's almost no doubt that they're both remembering her, alone in the lab, with the Chitauri virus...or about to jump from the cargo ramp- and Skye's heart crumples with pity and guilt. She feels overwhelmingly selfish facing the power of his love and here she is, brimming with the need to spill her guts again.

"You're a good friend." She speaks uncharacteristically soft and honest.

"You are too." Fitz claps her shoulder and spends his attention on the needle once more, Skye, in turn, dismounts from the stool in the lab and escapes with her chest filling with lead. She can't bring herself to unload on him like this, just now.

* * *

They’ve gone to the plane missing a team member more than once; it just feels different when they’ve lost one to fire and explosions burned into the back of their eyelids and the other is Coulson; fearless, solid rock of a man Coulson without whom none of the team would have come together.

It strikes Fitz brutally as they sit in the utterly hushed silence of a too empty car he shares with Ward and Simmons. There’s a sniper rifle at his feet with scratched paint that makes his heart stutter. He thinks he wants to tell Ward off for the improper protocol, but it doesn’t count for much right now because soon he will be fixing it in an attempt to forget that something is wrong.

“We’re going to have to tell someone.” Jemma breaks into the muffled hurt first; Fitz admires her courage and it strikes him that this moping isn’t going to get them anywhere. He’s going to need fuel, a goal, a target. They will need Skye and whatever else SHIELD can give them.

(It won’t be Coulson)

“There are protocols for this stuff, and that usually involves superiors of the kidnapped party.”

He understands a second later that sometimes (most of the time) being Ward must be nice. The guy can detach and just keep moving pieces like none of it matters. It seems like he doesn’t care as he grips the steering wheel a little too easily and recites this stuff as though it’s fresh in his brain like he read the handbook yesterday.

It’s not the first time Operations scares him.  
  
“Of which, Coulson lacks.” There’s a sigh in Ward’s voice when he presses on. “We’re going to have to make some calls.”

* * *

There’s too many people in the lab, too many people in the lounge, the conference room, they’re all overflowing across the plane and she cannot find a single second that doesn’t feel like there’s a million eyes on her.  
  
SHIELD still feels like big brother, no matter how nice he is.  
  
Apologising to Fitz and Simmons she dismounts, treks out of the lab because there are just too many people that she has to press her way past so that Skye can disappear into the isolation of her bunk; not that she can’t hear them all outside.  
  
So many faceless government toolbags that aren’t here for Coulson. They’re here for Hand and glory.  
  
She has _got_ to do something to get him back, so Skye makes a statement that gets her kicked off the plane. 

* * *

“You were amazing.”  
  
“I know”  
  
There’s a simplicity to the way that they work, to the breaths in their words and the way that she stretches herself across him, without having to ask. But she does, in the little titters of her eyelashes and simple shifts in the air that they have no control over. But she does it anyway- Skye has a knack for doing the impossible, or at least, the improbable.  
  
"Seriously, tracking him down, when all of Shield couldn't, and you had your- your" vague hand gestures at her dangling wrists that she doesn't see so much as feel occur "internet nanny" and at that Skye laughs, it's small, but he adores it and the way it makes the air vibrate. The way she shifts against him is so familiar.  
  
"I'm not kidding, it was beyond amazing."  
  
She feels wanted, relevant, even necessary under the meaning of his words, and she adores it. Skye adores the way they sound, coming from him and contrasts it against praise from others, and she finds, as she knows she would, that she loves it even more.  
  
"Thanks." She folds her gratitude around her tongue and feels it crumple beneath her emotions.  
  
"What would we do without you?" Surely he doesn't mean it to hit her so hard, but it does. It leaves Skye teetering between two edges of who she is.

“Probably crash and burn.” She laughs into the air.

* * *

There's nothing different about the scene, computers hum, keys are being tapped and then Skye bursts out laughing.  
  
It's her low chuckle of delight that turns loud, and it steals Fitz's attention from the hologram before him. Skye's looking between him and her screen as she laughs, and it makes him awfully self-aware.  
  
"What is it?"  
  
"I've just learned something won-der-ful." Her voice is sing-song as she spins her chair about.  
  
"You want to tell me what?"  
  
Skye spins her laptop about and taps the screen to show him. It's full of horoscopes and she taps at his. "Leopold Fitz, you are a Leo."  
  
"Oh yeah." He peers at the little paragraph of text, torn between his curiosity and his want to pull himself away, after all, there's a science to the way these are written- sort of- and he knows it's all psychological, nothing accurate.  
  
Skye spins it back to herself. "You believe in any of that crap?"  
  
Fitz shrugs it away so easily, eyes tuning back to the pixels hovering before him, indiscernible. "I believe it's just a science we're incapable of understanding yet." and he's almost making a point to not elaborate on that. Eyes are fixed so definitely to the things that he's not doing. Skye's learned by now what him actually working vs him pretending to work feels like, and she's attuned herself to the rhythms of each.  
  
"Most people I knew always thought them scary accurate." And she echoes his behaviour, because they can both feel a topic better left dead arising. "I never got to know that little rush of whatever it is that goes through people when they read these." Her lower lip curls into her teeth, and she bites on it. "But they always freaked out."  
  
He wants to fix this for her. He doesn't ever want her to feel so left out, as she does, as he did.  
  
"My mum was really into them." Fitz lets the holographic gun drop back into place, and it vibrates briefly as it hangs in the air. "She'd always take to heart the nicer parts of them. Said it was better to only know about the good stuff so you could always have something to look forward to. It’s better than dreading some unknown.”  
  
"She always sounds so wise when you talk about her."  
  
"She is. She's smart in all the ways I'm not." She opens her mouth to protest, and Fitz sees it coming the second the words have even formulated in his mind. "I just meant, she seems to know so much about people and how to be good to them- which is what matters more than being book smart- that's why I like you so much."  
  
They both feel his need to scramble back and take his words with him instantly, but they hang, just out of reach. Neither of them can quite grasp the expected response.  
  
"You like me because I remind you of your mom?" She teases. Skye goes easy on him and gives him an out. They both see it with blaring neon.  
  
"I suppose. You're familiar in that way."  
  
"Thaaat's me. Old familiar Skye."

* * *

“Believe it or not, I’m actually kind of excited to see where you two went to school.” A bright grin tugs at Skye’s lips that unnerves Fitz, just the smallest amount. Her hands swing at her sides as they descend the ramp.  
  
He laughs at her enthusiasm, remembers his own bubbling pot of nerves that filled him first time he stepped foot on this grass. Maybe if he knew he would have all of this- a wonderful team shouldering his sides and standing right behind him- he wouldn’t have minded the lonely quiet days here.  
  
Habit forces him to gravitate towards Simmons, but there’s nothing to stop his smile, the little way that his head cants towards Skye as he considers a million things that could have been.  
  
What if she had been with SHIELD from the start? She seems the type that would have echoed their steps through Communications.  
  
Skye would have excelled there. ~~She doesn’t do well with authority of course she wouldn’t~~ **  
  
** They would have been thrown together naturally, such young, brilliant minds that could be dedicated to any cause they were given. (Pretend that it doesn’t scare him, what they could do together, the three of them plus Ward.)  
  
It’s comforting to think that the universe wants them three together. Makes him feel like perhaps he’s not so crazy for thinking fate is a possibility, even as he follows the person who scientifically explained to him why it’s not.

* * *

Part of her regrets Ward following her back to the academy, she ignores that and loves the part of her that wants him to stand closer to her as she reads over the endless rows of names.  
  
_They all gave their lives_  
  
Every one of the names that she sees, all the ones she can read and the ones so far away they blur together into a comforting nothing mean something. They all have parents and nicknames and they all loved fiercely and probably spent nights crying themselves to sleep. It’s overwhelming and comforting.  
  
As eyes catch on to one familiar being amidst the sea of people that mean more to others, she finds herself gravitating towards it, fingers pressing against the cool of the rock. Skye fights the part of her that wants to press her face to it; her face still feels flush from crying, she still hears her own strangled words in her head and there’s a million things bubbling beneath that weird layer of peace that she’s floating on.  
  
She has a home here- it’s all she’s ever wanted - and Skye isn’t going to let anything ruin that.

* * *

Her head appears over the wall separating them so suddenly that she almost startles him.  
  
“It was nice, you know, seeing you be mister hero today." There's candour to her tone, crushed beneath the teasing, breathless laughter. Skye's arms fold against the top of the wall as he sits himself up to meet her.  
  
"That kid wouldn't be dead if I had been more careful." Fitz has entrenched himself in unsolicited guilt and it makes Skye puff out a breath.  
  
"That is not your fault." She sounds so utterly certain, as she does with most things.  
  
Fitz wants that easiness for himself.  
  
"Seriously, you were being a friend to Donnie, it's not your fault Quinn got to them." Skye disappears and he can hear her sliding the door to her bunk open, then there's his. Open, then shut, and Skye climbs onto his bunk, clings to him.  
  
"There's something else to this, isn't there?" She draws back from him. She knows him enough by now to know that his response won't be verbal.  
  
Fitz does nod.  
  
"You gonna talk about it, or do I have to go ask Simmons?" Hand on knee, eyes focused.  
  
Fitz falls back against his pillow with a huff and she knows to wait, falls down opposite him.  
  
"Okay, I'm doing the talking tonight then. You know, I got to have some great conversations with Simmons while we were waiting for you. She was quite _busy_ back in the academy, as you probably know." She pokes at his ribs with her toes and she waits, because this is how they've always worked.  
  
"I just can't stop thinking about how Donnie's situation felt so similar."  
  
"To yours?"  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"You worried about what might have happened to you if you never got along with Simmons?" She can feel his presumptions in the air between them as the two of them stare up at a darkened ceiling of a rumbling plane. She wants so many things for Fitz that it overwhelms her.  
  
"Yeah."  
  
"Did you know, she thinks you hated her, back then?"  
  
"Huh..." His tone is equal parts inquisitive and surprised  
  
"But you can't tell her I told you that, she might murder me. And if there's anyone who knows how to sneakily kill a chatty hacktivist, it's definitely Simmons. "

* * *

One day it’s going to stop being a surprise when they lose someone (mostly Fitz) on a mission.  
  
If it wasn’t in such poor taste, Skye would consider starting a betting pool on who they’re going to have to save when each mission is up.  
  
So when Simmons starts panicking all Skye can do is turn on his tracker and internalise her own panic.

* * *

Her stomach plummets as he twists. Fitz is an idiot, but he’s their idiot, _her_ idiot.  
  
Skye’s not about to let her idiot die for a fucking gun.  
  
She snatches at any and every part of him and for a second, the world drops away, he’s falling, she teeters, and then she slams into metal and he’s a lot lighter than he has any right to be.  
  
For a single, terrifying moment the world stills and she feels ridiculous, clinging to a dangling Fitz over a ninety-foot drop while he fumbles with a gun that might just blow them all to hell. Then Coulson arrives at her side and grips her wrist. He pulls them both back and there’s hardly enough breath in her to utter her thanks.

* * *

Skye starts working with a ferocity unfamiliar to Fitz and it scares him. Somewhere along the way she found a reason for her dedication- She liked losing Seth and Donnie to Quinn even less than he did; but that’s not it, it can’t be it.  
  
Coulson said something to her.  
  
Now she _really_ wants to get him  
  
Later they will all be left wondering if that dedication is something to be admired, or something to regret.

* * *

There’s something so terribly easy about how she kicks her legs onto his lap while the Italian countryside trundles by. He retaliates by kicking his own onto the seat beside her, and the way their legs tangle is wonderfully familiar.  
  
She doesn’t care to admit how much she needs these remains of simplicity. As they edge closer to their goal, there’s a feeling that hangs over Skye that something big is coming.

* * *

She admits this to him as the carts of the train bump beneath their feet and Jemma rants at Coulson in their ears. The admission is ruined by the unavoidable snort that comes from _‘your prostitutes.’_ But he grounds himself for her and his head tilts, something inescapable crushing his heart into dust.  
  
“I feel it too.” But his eyes don’t ever draw away from his task on screen, that’s what tips Skye off that he too is as terrified as she is. Scared of whatever this is that looms over the team, just waiting to teeter off the edge.

* * *

He can’t stop thinking about how that might just be him in that hyperbaric chamber, practically drowning in his own blood and it’ll be Skye on the other side of the glass with her hands clenched or fingers pressing next to him.  
  
Some horrifically selfish part of him is glad, because Skye’s an awful doctor and Simmons doesn’t deserve to have to try keeping him alive all on her own.  
  
But it should have been him.  
  
It shouldn’t be either of them.  
  
He wants to blame himself, but he wants to blame Quinn, Skye, Coulson, the universe. He just wants to tear it all down and scream his hurt to the stars and all he can do is tremble briefly, words and gazes from the team all focused on Skye, and yet it feels like they’re all watching him.  
  
Simmons disappears, and he trembles against the bile in his throat before following her, arms ready and he knows he’ll find her in tears, so Fitz holds all of his back and embraces Simmons.

* * *

Coulson hands them papers that should hold answers and solutions and a way to save Skye and he and Simmons end up with a whole host of new questions and so much frustration that they have to part.  
  
A ten-minute breather, alone with the stuff that an engineer has no business poring over; only it’s for Skye, it’s to save her, so Fitz presses himself to understand what was done to Coulson, to learn all of the answers and finally have the chance to be the hero on this plane.

* * *

So many things happen that he knows Skye will adore, will snap in two with her sarcasm or build up into a monument and she can’t because every few hours Simmons has to slam her palms just right and force Skye’s heart to keep beating.  
  
He wants her words there, the exclamation of _awesome_ as the echo chamber sparks to life and he knows exactly how her eyes will light up and she’ll want to play with it.  
  
He stares down the facts and lets pixels glide beneath fingertips and doesn’t care much for the micro-tremors that he can feel run through his hands. It reminds him of her, just like everything else in the world. He wants her pressing against him, fighting to have a go, and he’s so focused on the fact that they wouldn’t need this if it weren’t for her.

* * *

He wars with himself for so long while Simmons is cooped up with Skye. Unconscious, barely breathing Skye, who's ready to die at any second; who might die if Simmons leaves her be. Skye who got shot because of him. Because he didn't go with her into that house.  
  
Skye who is dying because of an asshole billionaire that he's trying so hard to not kill, right at that second, as he watches the man. He's tempted. He's so very tempted to steal away the killer's oxygen, or let him fly out of the jet. He's a button press away. His fingers are hovering, and if they hit turbulence, it would be an accident. (Except entirely on purpose)

* * *

It feels like it’s one thing after another on this plane.  
  
One more thing to rage against when it inevitably bubbles up too high and spills out- not a pretty sight when it does - he hates it. Doesn’t want any of them to see him lose it.  
  
Fitz tends to feel pathetic if he lets his anger get the better of him, in all of its explosive glory. _He won’t yet_ because they have SHIELD wanting to take Quinn away.  
  
_Let them._  
  
Maybe then, if they get him off this plane, the whole lot of them won’t be in quite so much danger of killing him. They’re all tempted- it’s merely a question of who would snap first.

* * *

He tries to like Garrett for the sake of Coulson, who seems happy to see him. Coulson. Happy to see this man who so very much unnerves Fitz who trusts near enough everyone he meets, who knows he needs to be more careful in a world full of spies and guns. Coulson's happy to see this man who jokes about a sudden, violent and likely painful death as they drop into darkness.  
  
He tries to ignore everything screaming out in him. He focuses because they are here for Skye, and if he messes up, she's dead for real.  
  
She won't be waking up.  
  
He runs through motions, but it's so hard to actually make it into a familiar motion when there's so much on the line.  
  
As he lets the doors to the bunker open, he looks to Ward, to Coulson, even to Garrett. They have such an easy appearance when they have guns in their hands and they face down an almost certain demise. Part of Fitz wants that. Part of Fitz regrets that.  
  
It separates them as people- he cannot tell himself if that's good or bad.

* * *

It's only once they’re all entirely sure that Skye’s steady breaths will continue that they all begin to filter out of the too cramped medical pod they’ve filled with pressing bodies. He can still taste the explosions and shattered glass scratching against his throat as Ward leaves him with a brushing shoulder.

They all need a break. As selfish as it might be while she lays there, just barely teetering back to the living side of the utmost brink. (Fitz wonders if he could have been quicker in all of the ways that might have her returning to them sooner)

“Go ahead.” Jemma clearly itches to see Coulson, speak with him about the baffling miracle drug they had just faced down gun fire and a crumbling mountain for. He offers her something of a smile, his knees feel as though they’ll give way when he’s seen the last of her back, disappearing up steps.

Fitz falls back immediately into the only chair in the room, eyes incapable of leaving her body and suddenly he’s utterly exhausted. The past few days seem to rush to catch up with him the moment his feet are out from under him and Fitz just feels so damn heavy, like the air is pressing on him. Yet Skye’s chest rises and falls as though she’s sleeping, normally, like she’d only passed out on the sofa during a movie.

He’s missing her like she’s left them all for a trip back to LA. He thinks, almost bitterly, that if this were a movie, this is his moment to confess some unknown love for her while holding her hand and begging her to come back.

He doesn’t have to do that, because already she’s on her way back and when Skye returns he will hug her as tight as he dares and continue to find a new way to silently love her with every day that they have.

* * *

She flickers in and out of the world. Wakes up hot and breathless and with her mouth dry. She fights against her bed covers. She drags them close.  
  
She wakes up with a heavy head and darkness pressing all about her.  
  
Sometimes people are there, Coulson and Simmons mostly. They have the most reason- Skye doesn’t have enough in her to understand that- They let her drink, they press her back against the mattress, and she’s on fire.  
  
It wakes her fully eventually. She jolts into the universe with a screech of hurt and she catches her name, in his throat. “Skye!” She hears a chair tumble, it doesn’t quite fall, it teeters, like that _something big_ that’s been hanging over them all for months now.  
  
She still feels it.  
  
“You okay? Do you need anything? Should I get Simmons?” He’s already turning to the door, and she catches how he won’t look at her, how there’s a brightly coloured cube in his palm. Something to keep him busy.  
  
“Hey, chill out. I’m fi- okay, no, I was shot, we both know I’m not fine, but really, I don’t need anything.” He continues to hover. “Just come sit with me for a while, please?”  
  
He doesn’t want to be here.  
  
“You were screaming when you woke up, I think I should get Simm-”  
  
“ _Fitz_ **-** the person laying in the hospital bed gets what they want, those are the rules.”  
  
She will make him. “Don’t make me wrestle you back into that chair because I will kick your ass.”  
  
He cracks a smile, and she feels all of the tension leak through it. The heavy air collapses around them and he drops himself back beside her.  
  
“Shouldn’t it be you doing all of the talking and making me laugh?”  
  
Fitz rolls his shoulders, half a shrug. “Sorry. I’m just-” His eyes are locked on the Rubik’s cube, and he continues to thumb the peeling stickers. “I’m just so sorry.”  
  
She knows the way he his lips purse, can taste the thousand words he wants to rain upon her and she waits, watching. She knows him.  
  
Fitz sighs, his whole body lifting and dropping back. “I’ve tried to work out how to tell you how sorry I am, that I didn’t come with you, and I don’t-” He doesn’t ever lift his head. “I don’t know if there’s a way I could ever explain-”  
  
“Fitz please don’t make me hit you.” He falters, and she steals away all of his words to share their weight. “ _I_ chose to go in there. _I_ wasn’t careful enough. End of story.”  
  
“I should have come with you.”  
  
“Is that why you’re not looking at me?” His head shoots up, eyes wide and mouth slack.  
  
“I wasn’t- I didn’t mean to- ”  
  
“Look, you didn’t do anything wrong…” She coughs, winces at the way it tugs her body, “So you need to stop with this kicked puppy look. _It’s not your fault._ ” She wants to emphasise so heavily that she doesn’t need him beating himself up. Not while she’s like this.  
  
She doesn’t want to think about where they might be if he followed her in.  
  
She wonders if she would be okay. She wonders if he’d be dead, if they would both be dead. If the team would have had to choose. They barely kept her alive, keeping the two of them would have been impossible.  
  
She wonders about a lot of things.  
  
About so many of their close calls, and she thinks that there were so many chances for them to lose each other. So many moments when their eternity together was to be cut short.  
  
She thinks about how it’s still a forever, but not an eternity, and she’s glad that he’s still there to fiddle with a Rubik’s cube at her bedside.

* * *

He misses having her in the lab, the background noise of her tapping keys, her snickers and clicking. He misses the way that she punches the bag in the bay, how her rhythm is so different to that of Ward’s or May’s.  
  
He just misses her.  
  
Skye’s really not far, he sees her any number of times in a day, but Fitz still misses her.  
  
The lab doesn’t feel like home with her continued absence.

* * *

“ _Please_ tell me you’re here to break me out?” Skye groans her annoyance the second he pulls the door open.  
  
He grimaces, holds up a needle, face apologetic as he wags it. “Sorry. Simmons needs more blood.”  
  
“ _Again?_ What’s all of this for?”  
  
He wants to tell her. She’ll understand. Understanding is Skye’s job.

* * *

They’ve found themselves with an Asgardian again. They’re starting to become a nuisance honestly; Fitz thinks he might be happy if they never have to see one again once Lady Sif has returned home. Not that he doesn’t like her (she had been a little rude earlier) but Asgardians always seem to mean trouble for Earth.  
  
A woman who can enchant men with just her voice sounds like trouble.  
  
So he stays with Skye and Jemma, resting precariously on the edge of her bed while the rest of the team, once more, fling themselves into the face of danger.

* * *

He wakes up, head roaring and groans, because this is becoming all too common. His head hurts.  
  
“Hey there idiot.” Skye’s hanging above him, grinning brightly. It’s a grin that he’s missed, but the way he aches right now doesn’t allow him time to think on that.  
  
He recognises the ceiling of her med-pod. Shifts, so that he’s sitting and hands clutch at the waves of his hurt.  
  
“Boy, Coulson really gave you quite the shiner.” She’s laughing at him, but it’s easily the most beautiful sound he’s heard in a long time- it seems like forever ago; as though they’ve both lived a whole new lifetime since she’d been shot- even through the pressing buzz in his skull. “Seriously though, you okay?”  
  
“Might need some painkillers, but yeah.” He licks his lips, suddenly aware of how dry his mouth is and how sickly he feels in his throat.  
  
Neither of them know if they should talk about it.  
  
“Sorry…about, uh, y’know, locking you and Simmons in here.” Fitz does it anyway because he does not like the way guilt presses on his chest.  
  
“Hey, no harm, no foul. Not your fault.” He coughs, grips at the edge of her bed.  
  
“That shouldn’t have happened.” He tries to heave himself to his feet, he wavers dangerously, sees black spots, but ultimately, remains standing. “Where are the others?”  
  
“Damage control.”  
  
“Just sweeping up the glass. I suspect Ward has one heck of a headache from the way May hit him.” Simmons is behind him, at the door, glass of water in hand and, as though she knows, painkillers at the ready.  
  
“So, it’s over?”  
  
“You’re not mindlessly following around some pretty lady with a pretty voice and wanting to obey every word she says, are you?”  
  
“Suppose not.”

* * *

It feels great just letting her feet touch the floor again. Fitz is there with a shoulder she probably grips too tight and Jemma’s there with a steady hand that’s warm to touch. As she moves, there’s something akin to a hot breath brushing through her gut; strike of lightning flashes through her, sharp, and Skye doubles over into two sets of arms while everything about her burns.  
  
She will not let this define her.  
  
Skye puts one foot in front of the other and leaves the scientists behind her, hands seeking out the walls, only to recede.  
  
“I’ll see you two in the lounge… bring a deck of cards, yeah?” She likes to think they look stunned as she presses herself to move through the halls, teeth grit against the pain that burns like embers in her stomach.

* * *

He watches Skye grow into herself all over again. It's beyond amazing how she grows, out of the confinements of her bed, out of her med-pod, into walking and shoving and it's really not long before there's no discernible difference in who she is.  
  
But they still feel something hanging over them. They both do.  
  
So Skye's either glued to her laptop or pacing the floor of Coulson's office and Fitz is getting terrified of losing her to this. Whatever this dedication is. He wants her to come out of it safe, healthy; he knows she can't be the same person, but he wants her to be in a good place.  
  
"I'm worried." He admits. Just blurts it out into the air and she doesn't even look at him, she's chewing on the pad of her thumb and eyes are glued to text moving too quick for him to understand perfectly. He only knows chunks of it.  
  
Did she even hear him?  
  
"Skye I-"  
  
"We're going to get this guy."  
  
She wants for some kind of closure, he gets that. Skye wants to at least know who this person is, that's toying with them all so easily. So readily.  
  
Skye's curious.  
  
When Skye gets curious, when she gets vengeful, she really can't stop packing her punches.

* * *

She turns her badge, her glinting, silver badge hugged by leather, over and over in her hands, runs her fingers along the dips and thumbs the contours of it.  
  
It’s real.  
  
She feels like she’s in a dream. Skye, erratic, homeless, ever un-phased Skye has found a place with tethers. She has a home, proof of it, people and places to love and things to call her own and she’s terrified that none of it’s real.  
  
A palm falls upon her shoulder, it makes her jump, twist, and smile back at Fitz, at Simmons who stands behind him, and they all hug.  
  
“We’re so happy for you.” They’re warm and familiar and it still feels so much like it shouldn’t be happening.  
  
“I’m happy for me too.” They all know exactly why she’s reeling, why it matters to her; none of them talk about it, though they feel the urge dancing about them, but she’s grateful that, in that moment, they’re all just proud of who she’s become and all the things she’s done. They’re proud that Skye has accomplished so much, and she’s earned it, not forced her way in with sublimation and deceiving files.  
  
“Wish we could celebrate it properly, but Coulson needs you upstairs, your clearance has been set up.” Just for a second, it’s wounding because now, she’s official, not a ghost that can be anyone or anything and she has to tiptoe again. She has to be real.  
  
There’s a sigh as she extracts herself from limbs and already fingers twitch towards her laptop. “Work, work, work, don’t you Shield guys ever get chill time?”  
  
“You’ve been one of us for ten minutes and you’re already asking about time off?”  
  
“What can I say?” She shrugs and turns back at the door as she hangs against it. “It’s a way of life.” And she disappears upstairs.

* * *

She’s never going to stop being amazed by the things that Fitz makes. This bullet that stands so proudly on the table before her sits like a gum wrapper before Fitz. She never could help herself when it came to his inventions. This one may have just saved them months of pains and frustration.  
  
“There’s going to be a day when Shield can’t even hold on to you anymore.” Skye tilts the bullet between her pressing fingers, utterly entranced by the design. Her back is pressed against the holotable and Fitz stands, bent over the computer, just watching.  
  
“What’s that supposed to mean?” For such a smart guy, distracted or not by tracking, Fitz is utterly stupid sometimes and Skye has to remember that not everyone works in contextual fragments of thoughts in the same way she does.  
  
“I’m just saying, you keep making these amazing things that save so many lives that eventually you’re gonna end up like Tony Stark.”  
  
“There’s only enough room on our planet for one famous engineer.” Such a casual dismissal catches her off guard and Skye’s form straightens, she takes a step towards him, then falls back, thinking better of it.  
  
“What makes you say that?” She settles for curiosity, a broad ignorance in this one instance, if it means she gets to hope for good things for him.  
  
“You know the way things work out there, in the real world, better than any of us.” They don’t need to talk about the fact that, no matter what he does, how hard he works, there’s always going to be the shadow of a circumstantially greater man that blots him out. “I could save the world and it wouldn’t matter because he’s already done it”  
  
She wishes that things like that don’t matter, but people are fickle and love alterations in their balance. The world famous superhero already gives them more than enough of that.  
  
They don’t want to tip off the edge.

* * *

Part of him is terrified that it’s all moving too fast. That they’re all hurtling to some great unknown with this man-hunt and it’s going to end in tragedy. He already feels an abundance of nerves bubbling over in his gut over leaving Simmons at the Hub, in the midst of it all and taking a risk that she would probably get into serious trouble over; and he for helping her, for being involved.  
  
“Just be careful.” He tells her as she leaves the safety of their plane, nothing but a small bag and Triplett to keep her safe. The team doesn’t know it, but the glance between them means a different kind of be careful.  
  
“You two are the ones that need to be careful.” Then Skye has swept her up in a goodbye hug and she’s rushed into the ridiculous maze that is the Hub.  
  
“Ever been to Florida?” Skye nudges him with an elbow, something of a smirk twisting her lips as they retreat into the lab side by side.  
  
Confused, Fitz shakes his head, fixing her with a questioning look as they fall into their positions as though it were any other day.  
  
“Blake managed to tag Deathlock with one of your rounds so,” Here, a heavy hand fell upon his back “we’re going to Florida. Don’t forget your sunscreen.” She’s cheerful as she pats his back twice more before leaving, laptop tucked neatly beneath her elbow.

* * *

"Have I ever told you how glad I am that we picked you up in LA?"  
  
"I don't think you have." She whispers it against him in the confines of a hot van in the midst of danger.  
  
Nobody dares let their eyes move from their screen. Nobody wants to miss a damn thing as the Golden Retrievers flash through the building, small blurs of yellow lights. But they feel like now, in the heat of their chase after the Clairvoyant, is the last chance they're going to get for a while to have an honest conversation. So they let it happen in small, private murmurs.  
  
"I just thought you should know- just how glad I am that you happened to us." She's never belonged to any one group of people like this before, and it overwhelms her that they all care so much. She should have known just how much long ago. They never stopped showing her how much they love her.  
  
"It's a good thing I was smart and chose to get caught all those months ago then." She's so matter of fact about the entirety of their past.  
  
"You had a good enough reason."  
  
"I haven't forgotten about that, you know." There's a halting moment, and they hear feet grinding against gravel and sand outside the doors of the van. Breaths press against their throats before they can continue. "I'm still trying to find them."  
  
Skye wants to tell Fitz, right then and there about her parents, everything she knows. She's ready to spill her guts in ways that she will only ever do with him and she somehow manages to swallow all of them back down. He doesn't need to know. He doesn't need to be scared of her just yet.  
  
_~~I'd hate to meet the guy.~~_  
  
Seconds tick over, and she tiptoes towards telling him everything-  
  
"I know you've already gone through everything Shield has...but if you want… _If_ you want, I'll help you look."  
  
Something sinks in her chest, something so heavy that she feels she can’t breathe as she wraps her arms around him.  
  
“Thank you.” Is all she has.

* * *

The plane is so weird without Simmons on board. The two of them can agree on that quite quickly. It throws everything in the air off balance.  
  
They don’t even know where they’re going.  
  
It’s even weirder because Ward’s locked in the Cage, ever so inadequately named as it is, and May’s piloting, as always, so it’s quiet. The air is so heavy the two of them feel they shouldn’t utter a word, because they are incomplete like this, and though they weren’t actually _there_ , death still clings to them all like an inescapable stench.  
  
It’s been so long since any of them have point-blank murdered and it’s at utter discord with their typical approach that they cannot shake the way it should have happened. They mess up their memories and think maybe they saw it wrong or that Coulson and Ward had some secret plan, but it’s all the same.

* * *

He calls Simmons with an encrypted line and a false name ready because that was their plan, and he likes plans, he likes real, concrete things that remain what they are.  
  
His fingers dig against cables as her voice falters on the line, there’s something in the way of them, there’s yet another thing keeping them away from the truth they’ve so desperately scrambled for. It’s utterly exhausting.  
  
Just as he discovers the perpetrator- they both let words continue to roll- she changes tone, and he feels horror grip him. _Something’s happening._ Simmons’ voice cuts away, cuts back in and then she’s gone entirely, and he’s alone in the bathing red light of the walls. He feels that thing that’s been chasing them since the Asgardian staff was safely away; it rises, taller and taller while his heart stutters in his chest and his veins fill with electric.  
  
The wire leads to the cockpit. He knows every inch of this plane. Fitz still finds the need to check.

* * *

He creeps through this weird half-light as though he’s on another mission, alone, and his heart feels like it’s sitting in his mouth as the door to the cockpit inches open.  
  
Relief pours from Fitz when he realises that May isn’t there. Explaining his cautious presence to her might have been an awkward conversation.

* * *

It takes him a second too long to understand why Skye has him hurtling through the plane, tripping over his own feet to cut the wire from May’s encrypted line. But it dawns on him as he’s tumbling down the steps. The realisation crashes into him like bricks, and it makes him move faster.  
  
He pretends his hands aren’t trembling when he snatches scissors as he passes through the lab, or when they reach for the little red line. He pretends he’s not breathing heavy.

* * *

She’s going to shoot him.  
  
He knows she’s going to shoot him.  
  
The second May finds out what he’s done she’s going to shoot him for it, and there won’t be any breath in him to explain that Skye told him to. Every creak in the odd, dimmed light of the plane is her coming for him. Until he hears footsteps and wide eyes are scanning for somewhere to hide.  
  
May knows the plane just as well as he does, she’s a spy, an actual field agent who knows better than him the logistics of hiding and running in a space like this.  
  
He creeps his way into the lab anyway with blood rushing in his ears and his heart in his mouth while his body trembles. Just in time she’s passed him into the bay and he’s got the door shut.  
  
The glass dents, Fitz backpedals and Coulson and Skye appear, and he’s never been quite so glad to be locked away from them for now.  
  
He argues to make himself feel better when words fly, there’s nothing else he can do, and for once, he doesn’t feel useless, just stupid. So stupid for not being more careful.  
  
There’s something so utterly wrong, he’s about to tell them this, in all the terrified words he can manage when they’re all thrown. They feel the atmosphere shift, and all levels of control go out of the metaphorical window.

* * *

It feels weird, knowing that they’re stuck on the path that has been set for them, that no matter how much frantic typing she does, no matter how much Fitz scrambles about with the wires, they’re going somewhere they don’t want to go.  
**  
** The plane is too dark, everything feels too weird and now they’re down to three on their team. For now. To go from a haphazard, awkward family of six, down to three unlikely survivors strikes at Skye as she bathes in the blue glow of her screen. The light is piercing as her eyes strain.  
  
Fitz and Coulson work about her; some deeply instinctual part of Skye wants to take them both in her arms in the biggest and most loving hug she has to offer while whispering empty promises to them both.  
  
_Whatever this is, they have each other._ She reminds herself, (a mantra of the times they could have left her), of every time she looked back, to the side, ahead of her, and they were still there. He doesn’t know it, but that’s why Skye tugs on Fitz’s jacket, he’s still kitted out in the blackness of their last mission, and with it rustling between them, she crushes him.  
  
He doesn’t question, perhaps because he can feel her exhaustion and relief leaking out in waves, he only clings onto her tighter. On instinct her head finds the crook of his shoulder; they both duck into each other and she wants so badly to tell him that they’ll come back from this- they’ve never failed before- but he beats her to it.  
  
“Whatever happens, we’re all going to get through it, together.” And it tears her in two to hear him believe it. (Fitz has too much faith, she also notes, and one day it might just get him killed) She wants to hold him to that promise, to believe it as much as he does, and yet, she worries for the moment he fails to keep it.  
  
With the words inches from escaping her lips, there rises a burst of static and then the voice of John Garrett permeates their moment and it’s ruined.

* * *

Work, _work, work, fix the plane,_ pretend that Garrett doesn’t disturb the air in all of the wrong ways. Pretend he’s not _wrong_ as much as he’s right.  
  
Simmons is at the Hub. They have to find her. They have to be ready and safe and part of that is down to him.  
  
He feels like he’s on display as Ward’s previous SO stands over him, muttering theories and logic that he cannot account for and tries to make sense of the things he does.  
  
Fitz cannot offer him the luxury of insight into himself because he continues to unnerve him.  
  
He might be wrong.  
  
He hopes he is.

* * *

There’s a god awful wrongness in his gut because SHIELD is good and true and stands for protection. The light from their screen bursts across his eyelids, sharp and overwhelming after so long in the hush of darkness. As the letters roll by, each one taking a millennium to decrypt, he suddenly is too small, the screen a hundred times his size.  
  
He doesn’t want the words to mean anything, he just wants them to be a jumble of letters that he can, in good conscience, ignore; but May’s knocked out, Ward’s locked away, Simmons is at the Hub. It is they who must step up. Himself, Skye and Coulson.  
  
He almost thinks it amusing they’re down the clinical half of the team- like some giant metaphor that, in the end, it’s emotions that drive SHIELD, not the sickening way they break down and lock away information.  
  
They have work to do.

* * *

In the end, they create something of a plan, in their irrational, over-tired ways that burn up adrenaline like it’s a life line.  
  
(In the face of gunfire, it is)  
  
Fury, it turned out, couldn’t even help them. The man who built up Coulson and Garrett who in turn, built up Ward, was not there.  
  
Even with the burning tension, he thinks they make a good team. In the end they need the clinical half as much as they need the emotional half, and that is why they worked. They balanced each other out in all of the right ways and somehow, they worked.

* * *

It feels abhorrently wrong when they attach explosives to the cargo ramp and just leave.

* * *

They pile from the plane in a large clustering group that feels too crowded- too much of an _all for one, one for all_ kind of thing that’s suffocating her - and Skye does not miss the way that Fitz shuffles to avoid Garrett, or the way the older man’s eyes follow him as Fitz tucks away his little device that’s about to save them all.  
  
Ward’s hand is pressing at her back after Coulson has ducked into the darkness and it’s suddenly making Skye feel a different kind of uneasy as heart beats echo in her ears, seven too many before he calls back up to them that they’re clear.  
  
Yet the tension never leaves as, one after the other, they allow the darkness beneath the bus to swallow them whole. She can’t help but think, as they walk, footsteps echoing in the air about them, that they’re probably walking towards their own deaths.  
  
As the lights grow and the hallways widen and she thinks they’ve finally gotten into the area of the Hub that should be filled with action and life, horror kneads her gut and her footsteps begin to lag a fraction behind, a ghost of her body.  
  
Skye watches.  
  
She sees how Garrett mumbles to Fitz, how Ward’s that step behind him, how May’s shoulders are so tense and she feels sick. Garrett is suddenly unnerving to her all over again, the looming height of such a short man and she thinks she catches Fitz shuffling that little bit closer to Coulson.  
  
Skye wrenches the engineer to the back of the group, fingers curling about the strap on his backpack- her own is terrifyingly heavy with the weight of explosives- and arms curl about him.  
  
“We’re probably not gonna die,” Skye presses herself into him and wants for more and more of the warmth emanating from his chest. She pretends she cannot hear the way that it thunders under all of the layers. “But in case anything happens, you need to know that you and Simmons are probably the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” A hand presses against his back, she nods to keep the two of them ghosting behind the others, who she is glad are pretending not to notice this.  
  
It’s so hard to smile. They’re two utterly terrified kids who never asked for any of this and now it hurts her to curls her lips up.  
  
His smile hurts her even more.

* * *

Ward tastes every way she could have ever imagined him to. Lips hard and unpractised in true intimacies he seems to back off, for a fractional moment- she might have imagined it- that almost makes her reel.  
  
She wants to take it back.  
  
She doesn’t want him to die out there- she’s terrified, overly-emotional, over-thinking Skye who freaks out in the moment _and_ after the moment- she wants to give him a reason to come back for her and her bombs.  
  
She regrets Simmons disappearing with just a wave, letting Fitz walk into a death trap with just a hug.

* * *

She feels like a sole survivor, watching on as outsiders pick through the rubble, and she’s alone- there’s no one looking for her.  
  
With the weight of the world dropped onto her shoulders she staggers along at Coulson’s side. They have a lot to do and that means pulling herself up, head high, and she works, fingers tapping, tapping, tapping. She gets so tired of her endless tapping and clicking and that being her _thing._ She wants more than that to define her.  
  
For now, she’s doing good, and the tapping counts for something.  
  
She leaves the others to their feelings. Shield was theirs before it was hers. She can grieve later for what almost was.  
  
It’s such a painful gut punch because she’s lost another home- the family is still there, but the house is gone- and the loss stings.

* * *

The Bus, with all of its shattered heart decorating the floor beneath their feet, falls into silence pretty soon after they take off. It rings only with the familiar hum of engines and technology that they surround themselves with. She tries so hard to ignore the seemingly endless bullet holes and pretend she's not sick to her stomach seeing her home torn apart like this (again).  
  
Skye and Fitz throw themselves at the technology- the only thing, other than each other that they are intimately familiar with- until they've done all they can. The Bus is in the air, they have internet. That's the best they're going to get at the moment.  
  
Skye seeks him out, but she’s retreating into the threads of her sweater, which scratches against her skin and it's so much easier than dealing with people.  
  
She falls into him, and he's ready for her, form warm and arms pulling against her just right.  
  
"You're okay." It's a simple statement, but she relishes in it, even as it scratches against her throat, and he breathes in.  
  
"Yeah..." and Fitz is so distant for a moment.  
  
"You are okay, aren't you? I mean, that was a pretty close call, right?" She falls back upon words, lets them fill up the space on the plane that echoes the absence of Ward and reminds her of how very fallible they are and Skye retreats even further into the little comforts that she can find.  
  
"Garrett was not messing around..." She can tell that he's hurting, just as much as, probably more than, she is in his own way. Fitz's years with SHIELD, this home that she has barely known a year, fills to the brim over half of his life, she cannot imagine.... Skye feels infinitely selfish with her hurt bristling about her- they've all spent so much more of themselves on it than she has. They get to hurt first. "You know, he was seconds away from shooting Coulson and May dead."  
  
She catches all of those knots about his words, keeping in place every meaning that he piles behind them. The little laughter at the idea of May, unshakeable, unbeatable May, going down. But she catches it, all of it.  
  
"What, you're not good enough to shoot?" She thinks her heart stutters when his lips purse, like he's trying not to cry again, and his breath escapes with all of the shudders his body wants to build up. _"Oh god."  
  
_ "I just can't wait to hear from Ward that he's locked away, for good." He deflects everything that she throws into her horror  
  
"Fitz, what happened in there?" Fingers press against his clothes and Skye lets her nails dig into threads not too far from his heart  
  
"It was..."  
  
"What did Garrett do?" Skye's voice presses too  
  
"Apparently Hydra needs a couple of scientists, and it doesn't matter much to them if they can walk or not." She feels everything within her sink into unknown depths of her heart "was gonna shoot me in the kneecaps." The last part is an afterthought, as though she needs clarification, and he mutters it lowly, with all of the bitterness he deserves to possess.  
  
Skye presses every inch of herself against him, clings as tight as she can, because Fitz is still standing, still has both of his legs, and she cannot bear letting anyone have that chance ever again. They cannot.  
  
They will not be allowed such an opportunity.  
  
She thinks this, every bit as fiercely as she dares, and for a moment, Skye is the tall one, and she has every resource available to protect him as he deserves to be. "Jesus christ." she breathes these words into him, unfiltered.  
  
She knows it, in that moment, as she crushes Fitz, and he accepts it- crushes her back even, because they are both brimming with the sheer knowledge that they get to continue their chances at their eternity together- that she utterly, irrevocably loves him, loves every fibre of his body and soul. Skye loves every notch in his bones and blemish of skin, and she doesn't dare to dream that his continued absence is a possibility (she knows it is).  
  
But she also understands that there's a world spinning beneath their feet, hurtling through space, and they've got other people to save from the very same, very real possibility of a similar hurt. She knows this, and it sits upon her bones, a soul-deep weight. She will save them all.

* * *

Skye’s finally ready to laugh once they reach Canada. Not that she should, but it feels like so long since any of them had a reason to be happy, really, and there’s something magical about the way Fitz pouts at her laughter as Jemma joins her.  
  
“You going to be warm enough?” It’s music to her ears when there’s a breathless little giggle from her small friend.  
  
“It’s amazing how many layers you can fit on him really.” There’s something delightfully mischievous about the suggestive way her brows rise and the corners of her lips curl. It’s enough to make her home sick.  
  
“I’ve never been to Canada before,” Fitz offers, hardly able to lift his shoulders into a shrug beneath the mountain of insulating layers cocooning him  
  
“If we push him over, reckon he’ll be stuck on his back like a turtle?” She really is tempted to find out, and from the look she’s given when May descends the stairs, Jemma was ready to shove Fitz down too. They could all do with the laugh.

* * *

She falls behind, so naturally, when Simmons is racing to catch Trip.  
  
Fitz is just peering at a radar, hanging in his palms, and she wants to laugh, just for a second, at the sight of him, engulfed in the puffy blackness of his coat; there’s hardly room for his face.  
  
She tells him this, with laughter dancing cautiously about her words.  
  
“He’s worrying me.” Skye adds a second later, when he only laughs with her. To that, Fitz doesn’t really have a response. “You can’t say that you’re not the tiniest bit concerned for him. He could be leading us into a death trap right now.”  
  
Something in the depths of his throats hums and she knows the way that his lips turn against his teeth as he fights for the right way to word his thoughts.  
  
She likes that he cares enough to think.  
  
"I am a little bit worried about that..." He admits it with only the slightest of tilts of his head- she could be wrong, it's hard to tell under all of that coat and hood- "but I know that, if anything does happen, we're not in any danger."  
  
Skye, for a second, is ready to turn on him with bared teeth while she hangs her frustration for the world to see. "I mean, have you seen our team? Everyone's so amazing."  
  
It's Skye's turn to let her lips curl against her teeth and she sucks on it, bites into it and tastes all the cold about her. She shrinks into the snow about her and wishes, not for the first time, to be back in L.A with Miles and her laptop and all the security in the world of things she understands. All of this- these feelings, this situation and even the country- she thinks is far too unfamiliar.

* * *

Part of her would be happy to stay behind this rock forever, even despite the gunfire, because it’s her and Fitz and an endless white expanse all around. The team and the turret is a bit of a mood killer.

* * *

They shed their coats and hats and gloves all at once, together, like they’re slipping from the skins of who they were, the people who worked for Shield. The snow on their boots is melting into two puddles, inches away from joining together.  
  
Nobody speaks.  
  
They don’t know how to speak.  
  
Director Fury, this monumental figure that has only ever been stories to them all, but a friend to their friends, this insurmountable, be all end all of their world, has been felled. No one knows what the right words are, so they drop behind pieces of their last life into the wet puddles and they slip into this different universe through a crack, hand in hand.  
  
They’re in this together, no one needs to explain that.  
  
~~Some of them still can’t help but wonder.  
  
~~ Fitz thinks that heavy cloud that’s been inching towards them all has passed- Skye can still see it, turning back on them like it’s alive.

* * *

“There’s something wrong.” Is the only way she knows how to explain it. “Or... there’s going to be something wrong- something’s going to happen and we won’t like it.” Fingers card through hair and she bunches herself up. Enough has happened today. She doesn’t need this weight pressing on her.  
  
“It’s probably because Ward’s still out there… We’ll all feel better having him back here. He is muscle man after all.”  
  
Despite it all Skye bursts with laughter.  
  
It feels like the thing they need. So they do this, go back and forth with names and jokes about the man approaching the base with broken ribs and a zygomatic fracture.  
  
“What happened to the robot theory?”  
  
“Robots could have muscles…” 

* * *

It would almost be funny that they’ve got to go through a lie detector of all things- would be if it wasn’t so insulting.  
  
“Can you believe this?” She asks no one in particular.

No one responds.

She scuffs her boots against the floor, caught up on the weighty click the heel makes. “Haven’t we already proven ourselves? Shouldn’t being here be enough?”  
  
“Unfortunately, that’s not how SHIELD works.” Jemma’s voice is lofty, same as always, but now it grates across Skye’s bones because she doesn’t seem to care as much as the rest of them, and Skye doesn’t get how she’s like that. “They have to be careful.”

“Didn’t do us a lot of good.” Trip chimes in.  
  
Skye feels guilty and sorry for him all at once. “Is it really any surprise we’re the only ones left? We did things differently, and it worked.” Her eyes lift from the floor to meet the scientist’s and she pushes her to remember Ossetia, the way they fought for them, and how right they were to do so.  
  
“You guys really were pretty removed from the system… Coulson must have meant a lot to Fury, huh?”  
  
“Not that it’s any of your business,” They all jump as though they weren’t fresh from a firefight and a three-hour trek through knee high snow. They jump like kids caught cursing and the younger ones possess enough sense to look abashed. “But he was my SO for years. Taught me everything I know.” The door clicks shut behind him.  
  
“Fitz.” Coulson is pointed in the way he cants his head, and finally he acknowledges those around him, eyes as blue and wide as ever. It reminds her of a puppy the way he perks curiously.

* * *

The chair feels ice cold when he sets himself in it. It makes him flinch and feel as though he is guilty of a crime he’s not even aware of. The chair makes him feel guilty, but he sets himself into its cold embrace.  
  
He tries not to think too hard on the fact that Coulson was in it moments ago- came out with a lanyard- and the metal should still possess remnants of heat.

* * *

It’s the waiting her turn that kills her. Part of her expects alarms to go off any second and someone from the team to be dragged out at gun point.  
  
She and Ward are the only ones left. Logically Skye knows that it’s so that the others can get ready to leave; the deeper part of her that runs on gut feelings and bursts of energy thinks it’s somehow symbolic.

* * *

She thinks she ought to be nervous at the sight of it all, but it’s just so _cool._ She cannot stop looking, looking, wanting to touch everything, tear it apart, have Fitz explain it all to her and build it back up.

* * *

The questions are easy, simple things to him, it’s been drilled in, even to the scientists, their name, their rank, their reasons for being with Shield, and then some are just plain ridiculous.  
  
Koenig runs a different kind of brain to his- that shows when he expects him to just accept that a box could hold literally anything, but only the one thing.  
  
“What is in that box?”  
  
He panics.  
  
_Simmons._ Because when has he ever been without her?

* * *

There’s complications because technically, Skye doesn’t exist again. She’s a no one with nothing to stop her bolting through those doors and disappearing into the Canadian wilderness.  
  
She’s smart, she’s quick and got the right way with words. She would survive in the world. She wonders if she could ever find her van. Maybe she could steal Fitz away and they would drive down to Scotland, somehow, and let his mom feed them her infamously bad food for a few meals before they give in and begin wolfing down take-away.  
  
They’ll bring Simmons of course. She’d probably want to stay in England with her parents.

* * *

“Wish I could let you just take it all apart like you clearly want to.” Fitz can’t stop himself from looking, looking, peering up at the wires behind his head, fingers twitching to pull at it all, and he looks down at the screen before the portly man who laughs. It’s such a wonderful, likeable sound that makes it impossible for him to not trust Koenig.  
  
“Perhaps then you could explain to me how it all works, because I have no idea what’s making these charts tick.” He gestures at it all, the screen sweeping with the endless sea of data.  
  
“Maybe when we get back?” It feels right that he should make a friend in this man, in any way he can.  
  
“Wish I could let ya.”  
  
“What’s stopping you?” There’s a lot of things, probably, but if there’s one thing Fitz has learned from Skye, it’s that probing gets you useful information.  
  
“Uh, respect for Fury, a dead man I might add, who is completely terrifying mind you.”  
  
The words hang, the machines whir and the devices beep.  
  
“Is he still alive? That’s why you had to talk to Coulson in private isn’t it?” Fitz is well acquainted with all manners of liars and Koenig seems to sense that.  
  
“….Maybe.”

* * *

They talk about nicknames and family and all of these things that separate Skye from the others.  
  
“Why Skye? Why choose that as a name?” She wants to laugh, fall back into the seat and sit with folded legs like the same child who picked out the name.  
  
“Why not? It’s pretty, the sky is pretty, and it seems so endless at night and it’s this thing that you always know is gonna be there, you know?” She doesn’t mean to seem so soft and poetic in front of him. She’s one of the few remnants of a shattered spy organisation. She needs to be sharp and clear.

* * *

It’s empty again, in the base. There’s Skye herself, Ward and Koenig and May. But May’s not actually with them, and she feels this rift because May’s the liar, and they don’t need each other anymore.  
  
So they’re down to three.  
  
She rattles so many words off to the do nothing man and she lets herself get angry, because _now_ is her time. The others have grieved and now she gets to do it. Her anger is a steadily built house, not a flare of flames.  
  
“We have to do something useful. I know you’ve gotten used to sitting around here, waiting for something to happen and just playing video games and eating Doritos or whatever you’ve got stashed down here, but guess what‽ Now is the time to actually do something, because out there,” a finger lashes towards the door “in the real world shit is happening, and Shield isn’t around to clean it up because we’re all either dead, in jail, or hiding out in some dumb bunker doing nothing.”  
  
Five heart-beats pass.  
  
“Feeling better?”  
  
Skye wets her lips, bites on them, and then nods.

* * *

There’s a lot of time to think while they’re flying to Portland. Working on the D.W.A.R.V.E.S is a mindless task because he knows them inside out and it’s in his nature.  
  
He doesn’t like this, splintering the team again, just moments after they’ve all got back together.  
  
He doesn’t like leaving Skye and he doesn’t like that he and Simmons are flying straight towards danger again.  
  
He keeps working any way because this is important, they’re doing their job and they have to do it right. 

* * *

Maybe she’s just feeling the emptiness of the base, maybe it’s just making her lonely. The air they breathe feels like it should be sacred.  
  
This matters. Ward, Mr. Emotionless, Muscly Robot who has never had an honest conversation with any of them is finally opening up, and it feels too good to be true. She lets open the flood gates, she lets herself feel things, because that is all she has any more, herself and the emotions boiling up within her.  
  
She kisses him again. She falls into him because they’re both hurting and he’s there and she hasn’t kissed anyone, properly in months, a year and she’s missed it. She has missed this beautiful thing that people call love; it’s not love, not really, but for now, she can kid herself that he reciprocates some warm feeling for her too, and they’re going to be adults about it.

But then her fingers are wet, and she pulls away to be met with blood, the heavy liquid that she could go the rest of her life without ever seeing again. There was too much of it when Quinn shot her, and she had to drag her body along a stone floor.  
  
She reels back. Something’s wrong. She sees it in the way his hands fly, a fraction too nervous and panicked for Ward.  
  
She convinces herself it has to do with their raw honesty.

* * *

He flees at the sight of it, and she’s left alone with a room that vibrates with tension, the echoes of all of their emotions.  
  
She hasn’t seen Koenig in a while.  
  
She doesn’t know what to do.  
  
Coulson, Trip, Fitz and Simmons are all out there, about to fight out against a guy with super powers and she’s hiding away in here, kissing a man that she has to convince herself she cares about more than she does.  
  
She tracks Eric down, because that is a thing that she can do- it seems to be all she’s good for these days, finding people rather than being the one they want to find- and she traces steps down an unfamiliar hall.  
  
She feels something building.

* * *

He admits to Simmons, who shares the balcony above the stage with him, that none of this feels right.  
  
“It’s scary.” He feels so childish whispering those words in the dark, where they can’t quite see each other’s faces.  
  
“What is?”  
  
He doesn’t know. He doesn’t know. He can’t work out why he’s so terrified. It’s not the man they’re almost certain is approaching the building, or the way the cello’s first chords are so sombre and heavy that they feel like they’re pressing enough to break his heart.  
  
“The world, I suppose.” Because he cannot admit to her that he’s feeling a thousand things too intensely at the moment. 

* * *

It’s just confusing at first. She can’t find him, he’s not anywhere, and that’s just weird.

For a moment, just a moment, she forgets a lot of things about where they are, who they are, what they’re doing, and she gets caught up in trying to find him, for her own peace of mind.  
  
The tablet in her hands, insists he’s in the food cupboard.  
  
He wouldn’t leave his lanyard there, the guy’s obsessed with them.  
  
A coin drops, flashes silver before her eyes, then tinkles on the floor, too musical for the moment. It makes Skye frown.

It’s a trick she knows, but she cannot remember who taught her.  
  
Ward wants to know if anyone enters the room, which means he’s hiding something in there.  
  
She wants to joke to herself that he’s hiding Eric away in here, just as a punishment for some crass comment he didn’t mean, but she cannot ignore the way her heart patters until a drop of blood falls fast before her and spatters against the screen.

Instinct number one is to scream, drop the tablet and the coin and bolt.

Instinct number two is to effortlessly hope with everything she has that there’s a chance of him being alive still.

Instinct number three demands she rationalises and piece together the puzzle thrust before her, in all of its graphic glory.

Skye goes with instinct number three. She crumples, she lets thoughts tumble over and over, there’s no explanation available that she wants to hear. Her throat closes up and she dashes madly, heart hammering because she needs another moment for her other instincts. 

* * *

He almost feels guilty when he clambers to his feet and turns on the beam of light a second time, while Jemma sits at his feet and Coulson and Trip fight against Daniels down below.

He’s up here, nice and safe and tucked away into the darkness, just like he’s always been.

Fitz wonders if this is going to be the entirety of his life, cowering in the small spaces while others risk their necks; even Simmons is a constant in all his habits.

The supercharged man below them finally staggers, like they need him to. He presses harder on the button, as though that might change anything. Daniels explodes and then he definitely feels guilty as Audrey skids across the floor, and Simmons levers herself to her feet using his arms.

Together, they stumble their way down to the stage, then he retreats. Fitz lets Simmons take over as he once again shrinks away from light, and he doesn’t mean to, but that’s where Coulson is hiding away.

* * *

She tries to rationalise; she tries to think in those halting moments between too fast breaths. Fingers in her hair, clutching. She needs something true and real and reliable and all she has is herself and she shrinks into a wall. This is her curl up into a ball moment.  
  
_Ward is Hydra.  
  
_ Grant Ward, Muscle Man, Mr. Robot, T-1000, Superspy. Their utter rock in everything isn’t even theirs.  
  
She cannot be selfish here. He wants something.  
  
He’s been talking non-stop about their hard-drive. So he needs her. _Fine._ He can have her, but the team, they have to know.

She shakes herself free of the hurt that grips at her throat. She cards her hair back; she shakes herself because she must be normal. But she scrambles about for something to get her point across, and she finds a screw driver in the medicine cabinet.  
  
It’s laughable.

She feels sick carving those words in glass that screeches too quietly; she wonders who will find it when he kills her.

Who will find her?

**_WARD IS HYDRA  
_ **

* * *

They know something is wrong the instant they land in Providence. He still feels his heart being tugged down by an anchor and there’s a buzz on his skin from his conversation with Simmons. So many things have happened, and he still cannot get his tongue to work.  
  
It’s almost amazing. He thinks it would be if it wasn’t so detrimental.  
  
He cannot explain why he doesn’t trust Trip. (He does trust him)  
  
It’s a different feeling to the one Garrett gave him –one that turned out to be accurately revolting- because in his mind he knows there’s nothing he’s done wrong and there’s nothing he’s going to do.  
  
Fitz feels that, perhaps, he’s still adjusting. He’s off balance and misplaced in a world that’s no longer there. He’s free falling, searching for footing and there’s nothing there but the people. It’s just that Trip shouldn’t be one of those people. That’s what it is.  
  
But he’s right to feel off-balance again. The world tilts sharp. Their plane’s gone. The base feels hollow.

* * *

They play all of the security footage over and over again. They watch it for the tenth time, the twentieth, but nothing changes. Fitz falls deeper and deeper into the recesses of the chair.

He’s tired. He wants this to make sense to him, to make sense to Coulson, or any of the others.  
  
May’s gone. Coulson could explain that- they had been fighting after all, and rightly too- but he cannot explain why Skye and Ward left, with their plane, and he cannot explain why none of them can find Koenig.

Fitz really did want an attempt at pulling apart that lie-detector.  
  
His head falls heavily on the desk and he groans deeply. None of them remember when they last slept right. Fitz just lets their words buzz in the air about his head. He doesn’t have the strength in him to contribute or air the rolling thoughts in his head that make him sick.

* * *

He doesn’t want anything but sleep.  
  
He doesn’t even care what it is they’re doing.  
  
But Fitz lifts his head, every inch of his body ringing with the desire to fall onto a mattress and pass out, and he grumbles at Coulson, explains it over, again.  
  
“May left the premises…” He grounds out.  
  
Skye wouldn’t leave them without saying goodbye. She wouldn’t leave him. She wouldn’t- he likes to think he knows her by now- he knows her. 

* * *

She’s terrified as she forces her feet to carry her into the lab- into Fitz and Simmons’ lab- the intimately familiar part of the plane that she and the two scientists spent most of their time. Nothing about it feels right. It’s too empty when it’s just her and the sound of Ward in the background, spray painting the car while she teeters in front of her laptop.

She feels sick to her guts at the sight of him, but she smiles anyway, all pretty teeth and tugged lips and bright cheeks. She’s faked her love before, it’s not that hard to do it again.

(Except it is, because he’s a disgusting, lying murderer)

She can feel her pistol pressing against her back, cold metal against skin and it bites so sharp it keeps her from drifting. She has to work with him, until she can get away from him.

She pretends she’s okay, that things are right when she presses herself against him in a hug. He even smells wrong now that she knows. 

* * *

They’ve got their answer. This is the terrible thing that’s been looming over them since the moment they set foot on that train in the Italian countryside.

This fact comes to him much later, while he picks up the scattered utensils he had flung to the floor. Trip’s on the other side, gathering pots and straightening the table- this place isn’t theirs, it wouldn’t feel right to leave it like this- when he halts, half crouched, hands fisted about silver.

“We should have known.” It’s a soft whisper that he prays is wrong. (Not that praying is going to find them Skye.)

“What’s that?” Fitz falls back on his heels, falls to the floor, and this is his moment to curl up into a ball. He retreats into the safety of his arms and tries to _understand._ He turns it over and over and over and there’s so many reasons why Ward might do this to them. (He’s their friend after all)

Garrett’s controlling him somehow, he’s got to be. He’s got to be controlling him.

Maybe Koenig was in the wrong (somehow) and Ward had to get them out of there.

Maybe they had an emergency. (It doesn’t explain Koenig)  
  
Maybe Ward’s got something dear that Garrett’s holding over him.  
  
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.  
  
Fitz’s back hits the cupboards behind him. His fingers are still in his hair, and he’s running a thousand _maybes_ through his head when Trip’s hand is on his shoulder

“C’mon man, we can freak out when we’ve found Skye. She might be in _big_ trouble if Ward’s taking her to Garrett.”

Maybe Ward’s a triple agent. Maybe they’re going to take Hydra down together.

“They’re not beyond torture to get what they want, these guys.” Maybe isn’t good enough.  
  
Maybe doesn’t make sure Skye’s safe. So Fitz pulls his limbs away from his head, his palms meet the coolness of the floor and he pushes himself to his feet. 

* * *

It’s one more knife in the gut when she swings the café door open, and there’s just one empty booth. (She’s not sure how much longer she can keep doing this) There’s a rush of air entering her lungs and she hovers at the door.

How fast could she run? But his palm is at her back and it presses her towards where this whole thing began, but this time, she sits in Mike’s seat.

Having her back to the main door makes her skin prickle and she has to force so many instincts down and out of the way. Ward’s watching the door, he has every advantage, but she has the luxury of him being distracted by all of the ins and outs and if she’s good- Skye knows she’s good- she can convince him he has so many advantages, only to wrench them out from beneath him.

“Two coffees….” Ward orders, she snaps her laptop open, images come to life and she plugs the hard drive in; it wouldn’t do to falter in her pretences now. But she fumbles anyway, her fingers only sit on the keys of her laptop, Skye’s eyes rise to meet Ward’s as the waitress clatters away from them in her too tall heels. (Skye notes the lipstick and perfume too- she’s going on a date tonight)

She’s not sure if she can do this.

* * *

They’ve whittled themselves to such small things being monumental successes. They’re all so tired, so utterly exhausted that Fitz thinks he might just fall asleep cocooned in the guts of their jump jet and face pressed against holey sheets of metal.

He might have, were it not for Jemma pressing comforting hands to his shoulders; fingers dig into fabric and press against muscles burning up residue of adrenaline. Fitz thinks they might finally have a moment to talk. To give in to their exhaustion and be the two kids who flung themselves at the chance to be brilliant.

And yet the world has it out for them, red bathes the base, a welcome low light after everything else being so artificial- after killing a man with conditioned gamma rays- and sirens startle them both from the moment.

“Oh, what now?” Jemma is rightfully exasperated as her head whips to face the hollow hangar, suddenly all-encompassing and too much like it’s filled by bloody pools.

“I suppose we better find out.” He doesn’t mean to sound so exhausted before her as hands search for purchase and Fitz heaves himself onto feet searing with endless days beneath them.

(later he will think this exhaustion nothing) [Things are still right for the moment]

The two take off, their steps echoing back to them across the hangar, still too open, still writhing with shadows that will snatch their lives from them; Trip is approaching them, fast, from the other end. They meet in an awkward collision of silent apologies and he presses Simmons to return to Coulson, fast.

“We need guns.” A nod to their jet has him turning sharp on his heel like he’s been trained for this militancy. (there’s never been anything like it in his life) “We’ve got about twelve hostiles showing up on the defences.” Trip offers as way of explanation and apology alike. A cautious tap at the question _how’re you holding up?_

“H-how did anyone find this place?”

“Beats me, but I get the feeling they won’t be staying out for long.” The fold of metal beneath their feet rings hollow. Trip makes a beeline for the cockpit and Fitz for the box sitting oh so invitingly in the centre like it’s expecting them. (he thinks it might be mocking)

They only have the bare bones of necessities. Ward has the rest.

If they die here, in this bunker, shot by the government that isn’t even theirs, he will blame Ward and haunt his ass for eternity. There’s already the foundations of a bubbling fury in his gut, why not add one more reason to vehemently haunt to the pile.

With scraps in unsteady hands they dart through the low light of the hangar into the falseness of the overly militant corridors.

Everything about them feels like too much of a perfect shape.

He offers one to Jemma, Trip parts with a rifle and they wait with heavy breaths in their lungs and hearts in their mouths. They wait with backs pressed to concrete walls and shoulders tense as their necks crane to find out more.

It’s not much of a surprise when they get in. It hardly registers as odd that General Talbot had followed them somehow, Fitz just wants this all to be over. He wants to curse out every deity named under the sun until Skye’s back with them and they get to bloody rest.

“How did you find us?” Coulson asks, as though he’s the only one burning the question up in his skull.

“I told them.” He’s sure he knows that voice.

“Hill?” Fitz sinks against the wall, choking back the want to sob. This counts as their second betrayal in a day. Fifth in the past two; unless it’s possible to total up the Hydra agents still scarpering about. There’s a lot of them.

“Now this can go one of two ways Coulson.” Talbot does not need to clarify, Fitz can see, beyond the colours bursting across his eyelids as he presses knuckles into them, the high and mighty stance and the cruel curve of his lip. “There’s more of us than there are of you; try doing the sensible thing here.”

Fitz opens his eyes to the dejected resolution that they’re wasting more time; Skye’s getting further from them and there’s nothing he can do but let Trip pull him back to his feet and turn in his gun.

They’re guided back into the kitchen, where all of the important facts seem to come to life, and they’re sat down. Soldiers with guns and actual bullets that will actually kill them pace the perimeter. It reminds him that this time they really are the good guys, at the end of it all.

They don’t shoot to kill; they don’t intimidate or hurt or break into ally bases. Their team don’t hinder like General Talbot is currently doing.

Fitz has to bite his cheek to keep a scream in check- a scream bridled with frustration, exhaustion, desperation and all the other emotions he doesn’t have words for.

They’re going to get Skye back and he’s not going to let this man stop them.

(He counts the number of soldiers, marks their position)

“Where’s Coulson?”

(He picks out the weakest, calculates how fast he would have to run to make it; factoring in shock, average military reaction time, his own speed and weight)  
  
Talbot ignores him, presses military boots to linoleum, grinds them against the dirt and keeps pacing with phone in hand.  
  
(He catches Trip’s eye across the table, picks up on how Simmons is sitting, and he knows they’re all making the calculations in their heads. The same ones. Which is why Trip shakes his head at them, pursed lips and dark eyes wide.)  
  
“Where are Coulson and Deputy Hill?” He presses again and it’s a fraction too much pressure.  
  
“Son, I suggest you shut your trap before I have one of my men stitch it shut. Adams over there is great at embroidery. I’m sure he’d be willing.” 

* * *

Her fingers fly against the keyboard fast, faster, faster. She builds herself a Trojan horse in record time, but every minute of that record is punctuated by glances up to the booth’s other occupant. He is what drives her to finish it so fast, he’s the reason she types so quick, why fingers scramble for any and every way to contact someone, _anyone._  
  
The cops. Of course. Of course. They’re all SHIELD, they’re all wanted, they would take them. Skye sits herself up just a little bit straighter, she twitches and fiddles with sugar packets then all together, she stops herself, she fights that urge, glances up at him with a false smile and she knows it’s working. He’s catching all of her cues and pride rushes though her. 

* * *

Eventually Talbot leaves them, along with other men, and no sooner than do their footsteps fade does he look to Trip. He’s recalculating, looking to the two scientists and wondering how much they can do. There’s four men, which leaves two for Trip, and one each for him and Jemma. They can do that, right?

The chair begins to feel too cold and too hard beneath him. His leg jitters beneath the table, and Jemma’s hand falls to find his, a tight lipped smile that he’s sure is meant to be comforting on her face.

A deep breath in.

A deep breath out.

He’s just working up the courage, after Trip’s nodded to him when they hear fast approaching steps, and their moment is gone because Talbot’s returning for them.

Two guns click, a fractional second apart; it has him twisting in his seat and his heart leaping. “We’re leaving.” The soldiers do not have the time to reach for their guns before a warning shot flashes by, sharp and biting into the floor.

Hill is at Coulson’s back, her own gun poised, and another in her palm for Trip, the muzzle leaving imprints that no one sees.

“Go, get to the hangar.” Fitz cannot be bothered with understanding why she’s changed her mind about them, or why she allows himself and Simmons only five steps before she presses herself ahead of them. There is not enough thoughts to spare on that while they walk in the middle, the only ones unarmed in a base full of trained gun carriers.

He does not feel safe. Not until they’re on the jet, the bay is closed, and they’re 30 miles out. That first 20 minutes is filled with logistics and battle plans that he tunes out.

Every inch of his skin feels as though there’s a thousand ants crawling across it, like there’s a million bees inside his veins, so his legs bounce, up and down, up and down, up and down, up and down. It bounces so fast and his fingers curl and uncurl unendingly as they hurtle through the sky.  
  
Mostly, Fitz just wants this all to be over, for them to have Skye back with them, for Ward to come out as some triple agent, for them to all fall back to Providence, or live on their plane and go on as they did. (He never wants this moment to end if it means never finding out that Skye’s dead or that they were right about Ward)

“I’ve heard about you two.” Hill tries for a soft approach that sits too out of place on her shoulders.

Gentle does not suit anyone in this moment. They’re all rough edges and haggard faces, worn down souls and exhausted bones.

“You could come with me after we get your friend back.” Hill straps herself in a seat away as though she knows she doesn’t have a place with them just yet. “Stark would love to meet you.” Fitz cannot deny that, as her eyes catch his, startlingly brown and deep in the harsh light of the jet, he feels his stomach flip and simple flash of excitement.

“He’s never found anyone he thinks could keep up with him before.” Fitz should be ecstatic, he knows that much, but there is not room in his heart for such joy when Skye is in trouble. When they’re all in trouble, and here he has an out, a moment to escape the trouble they’ve been flung into. But it would mean leaving them all behind, and he knows he’s not strong enough to do that.

He cannot leave them for the wolves and get off scot free.

“I appreciate it.” His voice suddenly feels too raw, too hurt and broken up. “but…” There’s not enough air in his lungs to explain all the reasons why he can’t and he hopes she gets it when he looks about to Coulson and Jemma and the cockpit where Trip flies.

She does. She nods with a little “Ah,” filling the space and smiles such a bittersweet smile.

Maybe he imagines it, but Fitz thinks he catches Coulson and Simmons sharing a warm look, something akin to a satisfied pride that melts away in an instant.

* * *

What good were cops if they couldn’t even protect her from one single psychopath? She woke with screams in her head and gunshots echoing and her throat feels too thick.

It takes those noises a while to fade, but when it does, the audio on the conversation happening ten feet from her grows. Skye remembers why she’s angry. She remembers the hate that floods her veins and she gives in to that feeling.

“We need her to decrypt that drive.” It’s Mike… The one that started it all. He’s supposed to be on their side; that’s what started this all for her- Mike had wanted to be a hero and she’d got caught up in it all.

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.”

She hisses and spits and lashes out with claws replacing her nails because she’s furious. 

* * *

“You guys need sleep.” It’s a simple observation in sudden stretch of silence. Fitz isn’t even sure who’s said it. They’ve blurred into a single collective as a group.

“Sleep can wait.” His head lifts from the fraying sleeve of his sweater where he’s winding a single thread about his finger, only to undo it and repeat again and again. “We need to find Skye.”

“They’re still in LA, I’ve been monitoring our plane.” Coulson holds his phone up for them to see, but for all Fitz knows, that could be a lie because the screen is just a wash of blue to him. “We _all_ need a break. We’re no good to her if we can barely stand.”

“Which is why we’re landing a city over and getting a hotel.” Trip somehow sounds chipper and amused as he calls back to them from pilot’s seat. Fitz does not like that he’s glad for the break.  **  
**

* * *

 

She had let his heart stop. She let it happen and she can’t stop thinking about it. She still feels it, that gut wrenching, terribleness of it all as his face twisted and raw panic set into those finely chiselled features that she’s learnt to be disgusted by.  
  
Skye sits alone, knees drawn to her chest and she sits there putting so many faces to the moment; Coulson, Simmons, Fitz, Trip, even May. She thinks of all of them writhing on the floor, unable to breathe and she can’t reach them, she can’t do anything for them. They can only whisper her name and flood her with guilt.

* * *

Waiting for Coulson to make it back to their hotel is like some new found torture. He paces, he buries his face in his pillow, he reads, he tries tapping into shield frequencies with the tv’s antennae (seriously, the hotel needs an upgrade). Fitz searches for anything to keep himself busy and he moves so much that he must be driving the other two crazy.  
  
They thankfully get it.  
  
It’s during the moment he’s resorted to putting the tv back together, good as new, that they catch the door clicking open. There’s an ICER in Trip’s hand in a millisecond, he flies to his feet and Fitz and Simmons organise themselves behind him.  
  
Two beats later the gun is on the floor, forgotten, and they’re all embracing their favourite hacker, taking her crashing down. Fitz isn’t quite sure whose weight tipped them over, but he cannot care. Skye’s laughing beneath them all and Fitz is certain he’s never heard something quite so beautiful before.  
  
“I missed you guys too.” It’s a little difficult pulling themselves apart, organising whose limb is whose.  
  
“We were so worried.” Simmons is the first to pull her in for a proper hug since she’s closest and they do it with eyes shut and trembling limbs that echo with their relief.  
  
Skye reaches for Fitz next and she’s exactly how he remembers her. They press against each other so hard they both stop breathing but neither of them can bring themselves to care. She’s a little cold from the outside air, he’s a little warm from the long day in a small hotel room, so they trade and melt together.  
  
She presses her lips against his cheek, a single, electric moment of contact before she squeezes him again and let’s go. He knows they have to stop, and they do, but they both remain in that single moment for hours after it has passed. 

* * *

He was never a very good swimmer; one of the reasons he failed his field assessment.  
  
He should probably move at some point, but Skye’s bare feet pad against the tiles of the floor and she drops down next to him, pokes his toes with her own.  
  
“Hey you.” They’re all just trying to be normal for each other and he appreciates it, but it’s weird.  
  
“Hey.” Fitz barely has the energy in him to talk, he wonders how he’ll drag himself all the way to the hotel bed. Briefly he wants to fling himself into the water and let himself sink.  
  
“Asking how you’re doing would be stupid right now.”  
  
“Yup.”  
  
“Trip told me,” Those three words alone are enough for his heart to sink further (he didn’t think it could) “that you didn’t take Ward’s… choices too well.” She hesitates halfway. Saying it out loud, announcing it to the sky and the stars would be like making it real.  
  
_Ward is Hydra. He betrayed them._  
  
“No one took it well.” Even tired, Fitz never misses a beat between himself and Skye.  
  
“You were the only one who punched a fridge.”

“Actually,” One blue eye screws shut as though he’s pressing himself to recall, (or it’s particularly embarrassing) “I kicked and punched it.” His lips paint a half smile, hesitant in finding the humour in it.

He’s right to be cautious.

Skye does not laugh.

He notes that she keeps inches between them, she does not touch to comfort, and yet “You know you can talk to me?”

“Yeah.”  
  
“and you’re allowed to be upset… You shouldn’t be ashamed of it, you put so much of your life into Shield and it’s just all…gone.”

“I know.” He knows. Fitz knows. He’s thought of this so many times over in the days since it happened but he’s been running on fumes like the rest of them until today, and still he’s exhausted. “I’ve been wondering if there could have ever been anything else for me…”  
  
He’d always thought he would be sure of SHIELD for the rest of his life. He never thought it was going to end or change so much.

Now, he doesn’t exist.  
  
He’s not officially anyone anymore and it’s terrifying and exhilarating enough that he gets, briefly but starkly, why Skye lived as she did why she ended up with them.

He thinks he catches pity when she raises her head.

“I don’t think you could have been your brilliant self and not have attracted attention.” He thinks he knows already what she’s getting at, but he waits for the blow anyway. “Hydra could have got to you first, and then none of this would matter. We’d all be dead or being tortured.”

“Skye…You know I’d never- ”

“It doesn’t matter if you would, they’d make you. Garrett literally said as much to your face.” Fitz wishes he could recoil from himself. He wishes he could grab Skye’s hand and run and never look back until they’re in Scotland, away from it all and they can be anyone, because right now, they’re no one.

That’s not what a good SHIELD agent does.  
  
He’s not a bad person. He’s going to do the right thing and see it through to the end, with _all_ of the team.

* * *

Hours later, Skye’s still exhausted and Trip **snores**.

She can’t sleep. She sees one thing too many in her head and the bed isn’t hers, it’s unfamiliar, doesn’t have her shape or any of her things- it’s only got one blanket, that’s not enough- and the walls are too far away.

She peels herself from the sheets, slowly, softly and tiptoes across the room, into the next, where two more beds have twin forms filling up the mattresses. For a single moment as she watches them, Skye’s tempted climb into either of the beds and curl against the British scientist she’s come to love.

(Funny how identical they are on paper)

She bites down on her lip, hanging in the doorway, halfway between turning back and dashing through the room as fast as she can. The decision’s made for her when he sits up, clearly not having slept either.

They don’t need words to explain it, they succumb to their feelings without hesitation, and she’s already creeping towards him, he’s waiting for her with warm arms and that smell of strawberries and metal that never leaves him.

It doesn’t fix the pitter patter of her heart- if anything, lying beside him in bed makes it worse- but it does give her a warm focus. A feeling of security.

Fitz ducks enough that his forehead presses against hers (really the bed is too small for the both of them) and like that, he’s out. He’s comfortable enough to fall asleep- maybe he was waiting for her or - maybe he’s just too tired to care about anything else.

He is that little familiar something that Skye needs to give in to her exhaustion too. 

* * *

The morning arrives, slow and peaceful, she’s finally warm and content and just for a moment, there’s nothing wrong in the world, or her life, except the slight ache in her curled legs. _Except_ for the weight of the body next to her.

It’s not unfamiliar. That’s not the odd part, it’s the plummet of empty space at her back. It’s the rise and fall of two others breaths, mixed with her own and how the warmth begins to drain from her body. It’s how her feet don’t brush the wall as she stretches.

“Fitz?” Skye prods him carefully but he continues to breathe hot breath on her face. She almost hates him for looking so peaceful. _Almost_. Because it’s Fitz, and no one could ever hate him. Not even after loving him.

“Rise and shine kids!” Trip, at her back, lets his voice wash over them, it fills the room in all of the best and right ways. It’s a struggle for her to stop her lips from curling. “Maybe you two should have taken the other room.” He’s teasing as they twist to greet him, a mess of blanket and limbs and ruffled hair. “Or at least let me get in on that snuggling action.”

“Don’t be gross.” Skye snaps, whipping their lone pillow free to toss it at Trip.

“B’sides…” Fitz yawns, “There’s not enough room as it is.” She’s overwhelmed in that single moment as he blinks at them, fingers wrapped about his own curls, to kiss the guy- Trip and Simmons be damned.

It’s the first time she’s ever really had to hold herself back.

She’s glad for that when there’s three sharp raps on the door; May. It’s too neat to belong to Coulson.

Trip, the only one on his feet is the one to unlock it, and though they really shouldn’t have anything to fear in this daylight, he’s gripping at an ICER all the same as he unlatches the door.

“Everyone needs to clean up and get ready. We’ve got work to do.”

“You and Coulson done?” Skye doesn’t so much see the nod from where she sits as imagine it perfectly. “Could I use your shower then?” There’s a joke hanging in the air that they all catch, because it just comes with Trip.

“C’mon Fitz,” A nod and a wave of his hand to the man she’s leaning against. “You and Skye can keep making out later, we should let the girls have some privacy for now.”

When he shifts, she almost whines, because the man is so warm and soft and comfortable; the absence of him leaves something of a draft, and Simmons shoots her an understanding smile as they watch the boys leave.

“Sleep well?” The other scientist asks in that little bit too high voice of hers

* * *

She’s sat in the front of their van with Trip, laptop resting precariously on bent knees, and in the back are Fitz and Simmons shouting into comms as though they still haven’t quite got how sensitive the things can be sometimes.

“You doing okay?” It’s the question they’ve all heard one time too many in the past week, so she follows routine and nods.

“You?” More routine amidst this new found cacophony of a world.

“Slept like a baby. Those beds were so much comfier than the chairs on the jet.” Skye throws him a smile but her eyes remain pointedly on the screen in front of her, and a second later she pulls her brows down.

“That’s kind of odd.” Teeth catch her lip and she leans forward earnestly, legs dropping from the dashboard.

“What?”

“I can’t find any computers in this place. Like, none whatsoever.” She keeps searching because it’s 2014 and for a building to be without a computer at this point, a building full of evil scientists and tech development of all things.

“There’s got to be something masking or containing the electric frequencies, right?” Fitz’s head appears behind them, and she shrugs at him.

“I guess.” 

* * *

It’s so hard to find privacy when six people are sharing two rooms between them, so Fitz takes off when the others are all still outside, bickering about their next actions.

He’s not needed there, he’s just a follower.

_I should have killed him when I had the chance._

That’s all Ward was doing after all, following orders.

He repeats his maybes to himself in the rare quiet. _Maybe he’s being controlled, maybe Garrett’s got something on him._

Skye doesn’t agree.

Why would she? He kidnapped her, almost had her tortured. But he remembers the Ward that played monopoly with them until 3am and presses a gun into his palm and insists he take target practice. He remembers the Ward shielding him with his body, the Ward who jumps out of an airplane to save someone he barely knows.

But he took Skye.

“Hey…Can I come in?” Speak of the hacker.

“Sure.” He finds the remote for the tv and ends up turning that in between his fingers, a motion as constant as his thoughts.

“Look, I just wanted to apologise, for blowing up at you back there…” He doesn’t see how her lips purse or the way she’s caught between the door and the bed he’s sat on.

“I just don’t want it to be true. Gotta give people the benefit of the doubt.”

“And I just want you to be okay, Fitz.” She settles for the other bed, falls back upon it under the weight of her words. The number of meanings they support.

He laughs a semi-bitter, breathless laugh wth no substance in it “We’re being hunted by the US government for being part of a secret spy organisation which collapsed because there was an even worse one building itself up inside it. We don’t exist anymore and we’re sharing two motel rooms between six people while we’re trying to hunt down a team mate that’s betrayed us. None of this is okay. None of it.”

It’s a second too late that he catches how his voice has risen, how Skye has pulled her whole self onto the bed so that her legs are further away from him and Fitz’s eyes fall back to his hands. The remote still sits between them as they tremble.

A second later every inch of him is trembling. He feels like he’s vibrating helplessly and he can’t stop it. The vibrations make him feel so sick and his limbs are weak.

_Maybe Ward has a reason. Maybe he’ll come back to them. Maybe Ward has a reason. Maybe he’ll come back to them._

Skye’s on him in seconds, arms pulling him against her chest and fingers catching in the fabric of his cardigan, bunching it up like she always does when she’s as distraught as he is.  
  
_Maybe Ward will come back to them. Maybe he has a reason. Maybe Ward will come back to them. Maybe he has a reason._

Her hands are warm through the layers of fabric he warps himself in, he’s acutely aware of them pressing against him, of his head resting on her shoulders, how much he loves her in all of his infinite ways.

“You trust people too much.” It’s such a soft statement she murmurs into his hair. Fitz doesn’t want to work out if she means that as a good thing right now. “I wish I could have your faith sometimes.” Her voice is even softer than before; it quivers as though she’s keeping a million reasons to cry trapped in those few words.

He doesn’t dare answer. Fitz knows that he won’t be able to contain himself like Skye does if he tries. _  
_

* * *

“Bet that kit is like a candy shop for you.” He can hear the grim grin in her voice as she hands the key to their room to a bored blonde behind the desk. He envies how comfortable with this Skye seems.

Not that he should. This kind of life is not a thing worthy of envy. He just wishes he wasn’t such a walking example of a relatively comfortable life.

As they step away he can see that appreciative hunger in her eyes as they linger on the Hypno-beam – one of the few things they were almost certain they wouldn’t need – barely poking through the bag in his hand and he wishes they had that forever they’d promised each other so that he could teach her everything.

“That’s one way of putting it.” He eventually manages to mumble, shoving his hands in his pockets to turn the joy buzzer over in his fingers and scratch his nail against the silver paint.

Fitz wants to be at least a little excited about the things Trip grabbed for them and getting to actually use them. It gives him one more way to try focusing on the fact that they’re splitting up again, potentially heading into danger.

He knows that his job is just looking for the Bus with Simmons, that’s not dangerous, (Coulson never would give them the dangerous stuff.) It’s the rest of the team he’s worried about. They don’t know what they’re going to be walking into.

“Hey.” She stops them sharply and corners him against the alley wall. Skye has beat him to the conversation. “I don’t want you doing anything stupid if you find the plane okay?” The kit in his pocket weighs so heavily as she draws him close. He wants to tell her _don’t worry._ He wants to tell her _you be careful too._ “I’m gonna need those amazing hugs you give when this is all done.” But _be careful_ never did them any good.

He wants to tell her he’s going to need her hugs too but all he does is squeeze her, just a little tighter, fights the urge to catch his fingers in her hair.

“Okay.” Fitz murmurs. Pulling back is the hardest thing he’s done. Letting her walk away, even harder.

* * *

The van is hot and stuffy and she already misses them, worries about them. It’s only been an hour. She has to keep reminding herself that as Trip climbs out of the passenger seat and carries himself with long legs towards that barbershop over the road.

She cannot pretend that things are going to be okay for much longer. She cannot keep lying to herself.

When this is all over she’s going to cling to her favourite scientists and curl around them and lie down for days with nothing but movies and laughter. She’s going to make the lot of them forget about the lying bastard she still tastes in her mouth. 

* * *

There’s only two airfields they could have reached in the times they cut Garrett and Ward down to. Their plane isn’t at the first one, and they’re terrified it won’t be at the second one.  
  
Turns out it is. Along with Garrett and way too many Hydra members- which means “Ward must be here too.”

* * *

Fitz backpedals so fast he that he stumbles and almost falls.  
  
“Oh come on Fitz, don’t be like that.” _You want a fact, Fitz? Ward murders people._ He doesn’t sound like a guy ready to kill them. (Except he does, because Ward’s voice is never that innocent)  
  
Over his shoulder, he eyes Simmons, keeps himself between her and Ward. He wants to believe he would never hurt them, but he’s not going to take that chance.  
  
“I’m not going to hurt you guys,” He can practically taste the unspoken _yet_ lingering in the air. “Garrett just wants a word with you two.”  
  
“Fat chance.” Simmons laughs behind him. While no one buys her bravado in the moment, it’s commendable, but Ward is too well acquainted with lies and false characters and Fitz is too well acquainted with her and every variation of who she can be.  
  
“Yeah,” The put upon sound Ward airs is so false it’s almost insulting. “We figured you wouldn’t be all that excited about the invitation.”  
  
Fitz isn’t sure which is more terrifying- the five men carrying guns that emerge from behind Ward, or the way that he grins at them- he only knows that he’s going to keep Jemma behind him, he’s not going to stutter or back down. He’s watched the rest of the team survive things like this. He’s going to do the same. 

* * *

It’s a miracle really that they don’t even tie their wrists. Fitz can add that to the tally of times people have considered himself and Simmons harmless; but if the way the stupid Hydra henchman grips at his arms and pushes him rougher than her, he’s just a little scared that he has something else hidden away in his pockets.  
  
_Good._

* * *

They ride silently. Coulson’s run them through their plan three times already, and she rolls it over and over in her head and does anything she can to keep her thoughts away from the fate of two people she loves more than she’s ever loved anything else in the world.  
  
Scientists who cannot exist without each other. Who she cannot exist without.  
  
She doesn’t want to know what Garrett may have done to them. ~~But she does~~  
  
Skye catches Trip’s eyes as he turns his pistol over in his palms. It mirrors her thoughts. They don’t even try to lie to each other. She feels sick. She’s sure it’s written clearly all over her face as clear as his need to finish this is written on his.  
  
“I’ve seen those two together.” He taps her knee, reaches a warm hand out, and she wants so badly to take it. She wants so badly to curl up into a ball. To run away.  
  
Skye does not want to be here, but she’s going to stay for them.  
  
They probably need her.  
  
“They’ll be okay. Garrett won’t kill them if he could use them. He’s particular about having resources ready.”  
  
“That doesn’t make me feel any better.”  
  
“It should. He seemed to like Fitz.”  
  
Skye imagines so many things as she catches the sound of Coulson’s pacing in the cockpit. She imagines awful horrors for the two of them. She imagines the worst kind of things, because they have each other, and that, right now, counts as a weakness.  
  
“Yeah, blowing out someone’s knee caps is just a new way to profess your love.” 

* * *

Those Hydra idiots let go of them the moment they’re out of the lounge, as though they really think the two scientists so small and docile. He’s always hated it when people don’t give them the credit they’re owed, but now, it’s working so well for them.

After all, they’re touring the two through the plane as though it isn’t their home. As though they don’t know that the small dent on the wall (also riddled with bullet holes) is from Skye throwing a tantrum over her favourite soap opera. The stain beneath their feet from spilt beers as Fitz danced with her to the radio and giggled secretively in the dead of night.

Convince the idiots they’re helpless.

“Coulson will come for us, won’t he?” Jemma catches on so fast and he didn’t even have to look her way.

He increases the length of his strides, just for two steps as the words burn in his throat, rolling through a pool of bitterness in his mouth. “The man won’t stop until every Hydra agent is dead or behind bars.” Fitz is so angry. He’s pissed and burning with fury as he lunges for the chair in front of them. It clashes to the floor and there’s the satisfying moment as they fly, hand in hand and the men trip.

Then the panic sets in. The blind rush as it spills over him and adrenaline fills his system. It’s one time too many in a week.

Footsteps and shouts chase them as much as the men do. So many doubts roll through him as they move, of his own capabilities and he thinks that they won’t be able to shut the door behind them fast enough.

It’s a miracle it shuts at all with the way his body heaves and shakes.

Their footsteps are too loud and call out to them the futility of it all. Each one echoes back to them as heavy breaths burn in their eardrums and he gives in to the pure blind panic of it all, energy consuming every inch of body and mind.

Only for it to all drain out at the sight of Ward. For those breaths that kept him going to catch in his throat like a mouse trap snapping shut. There’s a curse on Fitz’s tongue that never meets air as they hurtle back the way they came. (They’ve seen Ward in action and would rather take the idiot men behind them)

It seems a cruel twist of irony when they catch sight of Skye’s med pod where she once lay with blood flooding her lungs and breaths scratching against air. Now it’s going to save them. Ward’s face positively read murder. Of a programmed kind of emotionless; not the man they know who jumps from planes and makes dumb puns and calls Fitz a monkey.

No matter how he pleads, no matter how much Fitz remembers a man that might have given up the world for them, there’s a different kind of code flowing through the man now, and he can see Ward trying to rewrite it as he begs and Jemma admonishes him for trying too.

She’s a biologist. Fitz has more hope of overwriting the directive.

It’s so hard to breathe.

He feels sick to his stomach as the finality set in and once more, Fitz retreats to the darkness to hide with bitterness and horror picking his bones clean.

Then they’re falling, falling, rolling over and over and it’s so startlingly physical and real as he lunges through air for the one solid purchase he can find. Simple straps dangling from the wall are his only hope.

* * *

He wishes endlessly that he had been as lucky as Jemma. To have hit his head and slept through the horror that realisation shoots through him.  
  
His arm hurts.  
  
Fitz has to bite his tongue to distract himself as he tugs straps from a bulk of supplies and works free the first sturdy bit of fabric he can find. **  
  
** There’s no question about it being broken, but he checks anyway. He presses fingers against flesh, prods at bone and palms his skin. He feels the breaks, in amidst the burning bites of pain.

* * *

Explosions, guns, bombs, breaking in to an enemy facility and threatening evil minions; Skye can’t help but to feel like she’s in a spy movie as she lifts the backpack dangling from her fingertips.  
  
She’s pissed too “This is a bomb.” Does this make her the good guy? “You know what they do.” Or the bad guy?

* * *

“Hi John, just calling to catch up.” There’s undeniable bitterness caked in her falsely sweet tone. Skye throws everything she can at him, through the phone.

She holds back questions for the sake of the mission.

She rolls with the punches, because these are just words. They’re only words and she can deal with them in all the right ways. She knows how to keep this back and forth going. She keeps it bitter, and chirpy and she hits all the right spots.

It almost feels good, getting in a few jabs.

She thinks they’re done, half a sentence too soon.

“Oh, and I wanted you to know, your scientist friends,” She’s grateful May has her back turned. Skye feels something snap inside, and her heart plummets. “they were brave until their last breath.”

And he’s gone. The line is one long beep.

She feels her grip tighten, she presses the phone so hard against her ear and she can’t work out what to do with her body. She’s angry. She’s mad. She’s hurting in a thousand microscopic ways because they’re gone.

They’re gone.

Fitz and Simmons.

FitzSimmons are dead.

He’s lying.

Garrett has to be lying.

But they haven’t found them yet, there’s no sign of them in the compound. They should have found them by now.

Everything within Skye is flooded with a single purpose, and she suddenly understands so many things she’s questioned. But she has to stay here, she has a job to do. Never mind the way May stalks away, not even acknowledging the way she throws the phone. Never mind there’s a guy beside her who thinks he’s got a bomb strapped to his chest.

Never mind Ward’s here somewhere.

Never mind.

* * *

He does math in his head because that’s all there is. He does math because it’s concrete facts and it’s never going to lie to him like some people.

He watches bubbles rise. He counts the time they take, then he recounts and recounts and every time, it’s the same.

They’ve got to be almost 90ft under.

Never mind they’re meant to be floating.

Never mind the bloated walls that creak.

Watch Jemma because it’s been over twenty minutes and she hasn’t so much as moved. He wants to check her a third time for injury, but he knows nothing will have changed.

His arm still hurts.

* * *

Keys have never felt quite so heavy in her hands before, they jangle and clatter and clash as her hands move so jerkily. She’s in a hurry. In such a hurry, and with every door she wrongly opens, the closer she might be to losing Coulson or May too.

She’s waiting for it to full hit her. She’s waiting for the moment when her legs collapse underneath her and she loses all resolution to keep fighting. They’re why she kept going and if Garrett is to be believed, they’re gone.

He didn’t sound like he was lying.

They would be behind one of the doors she’s so frantically opening right now if he did keep them alive.

“What’re you looking for?” _My friends._

“Our Ace in the hole!” It’s a victory. After everything that’s gone on, it’s a victory they’ve needed. 

* * *

Finally, she’s awake, they’re talking, and it is so damn poetic that he wants to laugh, or cry, or vomit. (That last part is just the pain of his arm)

They’re ninety feet underwater talking about the meaning of life, and so many things are bubbling in his chest. There’s no way out. Not for them. Suffocate or drown or starve. He wonders which will come first.

He’s ridiculously aware of every breath that enters his lungs. He’s ridiculously aware of every breath that escapes his lungs.

The pod warbles around him, he feels it flip, but it doesn’t quite, and they’re still exactly where they are. Fitz presses fingers to his temple, they come away slightly wet. He feels immeasurably light when he blinks five times fast and that’s definitely blood.  
  
“Jem- Jemma.” He peers at the blood curious, stares at it like it’s a perpetrator. For a second he can’t breathe.  
  
She’s beside him and he can’t work out when that happened. Was she beside him the whole time? 

* * *

For a second, in that single moment where he’s caught between sleep and consciousness, he’s forgotten everything, and he’s back in his bunk and everyone else is in the lounge or the lab going about their day, waiting for some new mission.  
  
Jemma’s staring out at the ocean.

No, she’s staring up towards the surface that they can’t even see. A cough wracks his body, he feels muscles seize up beneath skin and palms slam against metal.

“Oh thank god.” He catches Simmons words amongst heavy breaths while he claws and twists and his body spasms. Little hands are at his shoulders, delicate trembling things, but they’re warm and they belong to Simmons. She helps him sit up and Fitz gratefully falls back against the wall that’s actually the ceiling of the pod.

“I’m not letting you get out of this without me.” She tries for joking, and he loves her for that, but they both know it’s fruitless from the way her voice stretches thin.

It figured that they would die together.

Simmons has always been there. It makes sense.

He’s got one hell of a headache.  
  
“Of course not. We’re in this together after all.” It comes out so bitter and he didn’t mean it, he really didn’t and thankfully Simmons gets that.  
  
“Yeah, just like we promised.” He remembers arguing with her, begging as if he knew somehow that this was going to happen (no one could have predicted this.) “Think this is the day we’ll regret going into the field?” He’s more awake now, the world is still heavy and it feels like a wire in his brain has disconnected, but he has clarity.

She smiles softly at him (it’s more of a grimace). Fitz is unbelievably glad he gets to see that smile before he dies. “You’ve said that about every mission we’ve gone on.” She’s trying not to cry. They’re not ready to die. They’re not even thirty and they have so many firsts to achieve, so many things to offer the world and they’re stuck at the bottom of the ocean with a million unspoken feelings hanging in the air between them.

Simmons retreats to watch the bubbles rise against the glass again. Fitz retreats into his own head again.

They’re clearly on two different paths of thought.

“What do you suppose it’s like?” 

* * *

She finds May peeling a nail from the killer’s foot.

Melinda May nailed Grant Ward to the floor, literally.

Skye feels something fracture and then crumble, and she’s laughing hysterically, salty tears mixing with salty sweat that falls into her eyes. She backs away from them, crashes against a table, she may as well have Thor’s hammer resting on her chest for all the weight she feels as her body meets the floor.

“Garrett says he killed them.” She doesn’t know when laughter turned to silent tears or when she fell or when May came over. She just finds the words tangled in a whisper and she lets them go.  
  
“They can’t be dead May, they can’t, they can’t.” Skye trembles and fingers claw at her hair.  
  
She needs them.   _When did that happen?_

* * *

It’s so difficult for him to work with just the one hand. His other arm stings and burns a fever beneath his flesh. His hand won’t cooperate. Simmons will have to do.

He’s thankful that it’s her that he’s trapped down here with, (of course he isn’t, but Fitz can be selfish sometimes) anyone else might have made a disaster of his trade. While he lets her work with wires and stick them to the glass with plasters (Band-Aids) from the first aid kit he ducks his head and alters the pressure of the oxygen. He reads the number.

There’s only enough for one of them. Just one. He reads the number over and over.

He’s not going to swim out of here with a broken arm anyway- not that he was ever good enough at it before to make it up ninety feet.

It’s not that he wants to die. That’s not what he wants at all, he wants to keep seeing Skye and May and Coulson, hell, even Trip (there’s even an echo of Ward in his heart, that carries with it a hope). He wants to be there with Simmons at his side for the rest of his life. He wants to keep them all with him until the fight is over.

But he has to pick, and it’s only logical that it would be Simmons. His best friend, his everything, is so much more than he is to so many more people.

Fitz has the team and his mum.

Jemma’s a doctor, she can save so many more lives than he ever could- Fitz makes weapons and escape tools, things for cowards, like him- and he’s got a broken arm and exhausted bones and she’s a better swimmer. She could make that breath last. 

* * *

Coulson looks like hell when Skye and May finally find him, blood shaping his head and a pretty bruise lining his cheek. Skye gathers that she and May don’t look much better- her eyes are still red and her hair is a mess from the way her fingers dragged through it.

She admires May who forces Ward to stand in line with all the other Hydra members.

She admires Coulson who looks like he’s about to drop dead, yet still stands.

She admires Trip who rushes to her, arms ready for a hug and he doesn’t make a sound when she crashes into him.

“Oh god.” It strikes her, four seconds into the hug, that they don’t know yet. “Oh god, Trip. Coulson. Fitz and Simmons… Garrett said... He told me he had Fitz and Simmons killed.”

A simple, stunned beat passes between them before Coulson reaches out to her, “Skye…” He speaks her name softly, reaches cautiously enough that every electrical pulse in his muscles become discordant with how he looks. “They’re alive... Fury picked them up.”

“Fury…Wh- Where did he pick them up from?” Every inch of her drops away into a single question mark (a remarkably relieved question mark). She twists on her toes and stretches to look on to where the towering man stands, buried in shadows.

“He never said, we were a little busy trying not to get killed by Garrett.” Skye feels Trip at her shoulders as several sets of eyes follow Coulson’s to a stretcher covered only by a thin cloth.

“We can trade stories when we’re back on the Bus.” It’s like a light goes off when May adds her voice. The Bus- their home- they have their home back now. (It won’t be home without them.)

“I have to know what happened to them.” She teeters towards Fury, and it’s almost as if he knows, there’s a small nod, and she feels just that little bit less unnerved by the man still wearing shades, indoors. 

* * *

It’s the most intense plane ride she’s ever had. The Bus looks even worse than the last time she saw it, a fleeting moment as she herself fled with heavy breaths and Coulson at her side.

There were also bullets flying.

Now though, they’re heading towards something good. They’re heading towards her friends, her very much alive friends who she’s going to hug so tight she might crack ribs.

It’s just so hard to ignore the fact that they’re sharing the space with a murderer- the man who almost killed those friends- a man she very much wants to kill.

Part of Skye is tempted, now, while he lacks strength and the ability to move, to charge into the cage (where he kept her) and beat the ever loving crap out of him until she cannot discern her bruises from May’s upon him, and until her knuckles bleed. She’s tempted to do it _for them._

Skye chooses to be the bigger person- or maybe she’s just too scared.

* * *

She wonders how Jemma quite manages to stay so strong. How does she stand there, delivering to them the simple fact that he’ll wake up, for sure, but they just can’t tell how his brain has been damaged? That he might sleep for a single day or weeks.  
  
It makes her sick and furious to look at him, the disgusting pool of anger in her gut, but she can’t look away for fear he might fade away if someone’s not watching.  
  
(It has to be her) 

* * *

Sometimes she can’t tear her eyes away from him, sometimes she can’t look; he’s so pale and lifeless and she wonders about what they all must have felt when it was her like this, bullet in her gut and locked away behind glass. At least here, she can hold his hand, brush fingertips against his cheek and whisper an infinity of promises to him, if only he will wake up.  
  
_She needs him.  
  
_ At least when it was her, Simmons had told Skye, they knew what was wrong, they knew what had to be done. They knew why she slept so long. With Fitz, they cannot know- Skye wonders which is worse- when he will return to them, they cannot know how or even if. 

* * *

It’s Simmons that catches her with choked sobs caught in her throat and tears falling to the hand of his that she grips.

“God, I miss him so much.” It’s only been two days, but they all feel his absence hanging over them as though they’re missing their sun in the sky.

“I miss him too.” 

* * *

“He chose this…” Skye’s not sure she heard Simmons right, her whisper was muted under the gravity of her admission.

“What?” It feels like she’s been asking this question too many times lately, like she’s a second behind everyone else, a single step. Like she’s waiting for him to catch up to them. Only he won’t.

“Fitz chose this.” A machine beeps somewhere above her head. ~~Three short, sharp sounds.~~

“What do you mean?” Skye cannot mess this up. She’s finally getting what they’ve all been waiting to hear. She twists in her seat, folds her legs beneath her and promises Simmons however much or little attention she needs. Skye’s always been good at judging that.

“He expected me to leave him, you know?” Her friend has been sitting on this story from the moment Skye wrapped her arms about her and refused to let go. “We- between us we figured out a way to blow up the window and there was a canister that he managed to modify the pressure of to release oxygen and… We could only get enough air in it for one breath and it wasn’t nearly enough to get one person up ninety feet but he-” Simmons eyes are rimmed red and her words fluctuate in speed

“He wouldn’t have been able to swim with his broken arm any way. Fitz wouldn’t accept anything but me taking the air and… He thought I would leave him Skye. He thought I’d just leave him at the bottom of the ocean. Can you believe it?”

Two sets of eyes drop to watch the rise and fall of his chest, trail along his face, linger on how pale his cheeks are. She can believe it. That’s almost the worst part.

“I couldn’t imagine… Jemma,” Skye drops herself off her chair and falls into Simmons arms again. “You are amazing. “

“I could have swum faster Skye. I could have kept this from happening.” They don’t want to acknowledge that he won’t be the same old Fitz when he wakes up.

“You swam ninety feet straight up on a single breath of air, carrying a dead weight I might add” Her hand flies to her mouth, it’s the wrong word and she feels the intensity of the silence that follows her mistake.

“Oh god, Jemma, I’m so sorry- I- I didn’t mean…” She wishes she’d been a fraction more careful  
  
“No- no, you’re right. It was all very disorienting and confusing.” Simmons pulls herself out of the embrace and makes for the door, and Skye thinks that’s the end of their honesty.

Jemma turns back, just for a second, “Maybe it would have been kinder…” and the strength in her twisted smile breaks her heart.

* * *

Trip hurtles around the corner so fast he loses his footing and Skye’s alive in that second, ready to fight some unseen intruder chasing him.

“F- Fi- Fitz is-” she doesn’t dare hope

“What? Is something wrong? Please don’t-”

“He’s awake.”

The hallway is empty two seconds later.


End file.
